The other night I finished painting some masks and took my brushes and paint-daubled fingers into the bathroom to wash up. I flipped on the light switch with my elbow and there was a spider the size of a golf ball clinging to the wall between the sink and toilet.
"Gah!" I hollered. I hate spiders. They're cool and all, but I hate them in my house. The Sparring Partner had already warned me he'd found a couple big ones in the house; one in the bathroom and another in the kitchen.
"What's the matter?" the SP called from the living room.
"Come rescue me!"
"You spill paint on yourself?"
"No..."
"Oh, you found a little friend?" I heard his footsteps coming and moved out of the way to wash up in the kitchen.
He ducked into the bathroom. "Well hello, big boy!" he said, and a moment later came out with his hand loosely cupped. He went out the back door and deposited the garden spider in the garden.
"Thanks," I said.
"I rescued both of you," he pointed out, because he knows I'll kill them if it's left up to me. I've had a number of painful spider bites in my life.
This is looking to be a particularly infested year. We always see some in the fall, but this number and the size of them is creeping me out. This is an old house and I have a lot of fabric and boxes sitting around the perimeter of the rooms.
Just before I started writing this I put my bare foot down on the floor, preparatory to spinning my chair around, and something skittered under my arch. Sure enough, it was another of those brown spiders, this one only slightly smaller than the last, with a big tuft of sewing lint clinging to its back.
This one was not spared.
As soon as I finish this next shipment of costumes I'm going to break out the vacuum cleaner.
