All Creatures Great and Small

A couple of months ago the boys and I took some baby birds to an animal rescue group.  They needed help and I was able to get them to the place where they could get help.  I think I should call to see how the birds fared.  I will also need to write about the whole experience from discovering the birds - originally as eggs - in a roller blade in our back yard to amazing skills to deduce the mother was dead to driving them to a sanctuary in Woodinville.  I suppose the summary tells you everything you need to know but why give you the nutshell version of a story when I can drag it out and make it a lengthy saga?

This story is not about birds but it is another creature, great in purpose, smallish in nature.  Also, gross and creepy and crawly.  It's about a spider.  I don't know what kind of spider.  It has had 8 legs, that's all I can tell you about it; other than it was FREAKIN' HUGE!  And by FREAKIN' HUGE I am using my frame of reference as a woman who has grown up in the Pacific Northwest where our largest spiders are probably snacks for other spiders in other more tropical regions of the world.

Still.  It was big.

A couple of weeks ago I read an article in the Times about a seeming population spike in spiders.  We don't actually have more spiders but because of our funky weather we've been having they have been maturing faster so they are bigger and we are noticing them earlier than we normally do.  A woman in the story used to be very afraid of spiders until one day she decided to not be.  She studied spiders and learned a lot about them.  She kept some as pets even.   Throughout the article I learned that a non-native spider is taking over the hobo spider population here in the NW - it's our only poisonous spider.  Or was it the recluse?  Eh, one of them is native to this area and is only moderately poisonous, I guess.  Which ever one it was is on the decline (yea!).

I also learned what we often attribute to spider bites are most often not spider bites.  A spider person - arachna something ist - said in his many years of working with spiders he had only been bitten once or twice and it was like a mosquito bite.

After reading the article I was feeling less squeamish around spiders.  I didn't jump out of my skin and rush to squish every spider that dared to cross my path in the house.  I sized it up and thought to myself, "It's eating the other bugs and keeping the pest population under control.  It's my friend."  Or something along those lines.  Then I turned my thoughts to something else and went on with my evening - because they always come out at night and since I am sleeping in the basement I see a lot of the little buggers, I mean, helpful other bug eating creatures.

It didn't hurt that in the article they were described as being clean like cats, doing a lot of grooming.

When we spend time outside and see a spider I draw Gavin's attention to it and tell him a little about spiders.  How they eat bugs and are helpful creatures and the like. 

He does not witness any hysterics.  No screaming, no jumping.  Just his mom calmly looking at the spider and talking about it's web and eight legs.

Tonight I took a hiatus from my spider loving ways.  And, I do mean love.  To go from hate to not killing is an act of love.

I was in the downstairs (of course) bathroom.  Out of the corner of my eye I saw something big and black on the ceiling.  Did you catch that?  I noticed it with my PERIPHERAL vision it was so FREAKIN' HUGE!  To show you how huge it is I will now post a picture of said monster.

Frick!

I can't upload the picture.  Maybe I'll have Ryan look at it tomorrow to see if he can help upload it.

Trust me.  It was huge.

Without screaming or doing the yucky squirmy spider dance I ran upstairs to ask Ryan if he thought a freakishly huge spider would be able to climb back out of the vacuum cleaner after I sucked it up.  He thought for a second and replied, "Yeah, but probably only at night when you are sleeping downstairs." 

By the way - Ryan and I are fine.  I'm sleeping downstairs to be near Mr. T who does not sleep through the night.

I grabbed the hose attachment to the central vacuum and ran back downstairs with the camera (set to a bad setting apparently) to take a picture of the freakishly huge spider before I sucked it up.  I stood as far away as I could and slowly inched forward with the vacuum hose trained at the spider.  It was so big you could see it slowly pull away from the wall, little leg by little leg.  OK, even if it went down that way I wouldn't know since I was looking through squinted eyes and off to the side a little as if I was trying to light a gas burner that had been pouring gas for a while before a flame was introduced. 

The house is down one freakishly huge spider.  I bet it was one I let meander on by earlier all fattened up on bugs.  Sorry spider.  You just aren't allowed to be that big in my house.