The Creepy Crawlies

About 8:00 Saturday night, Andy and I went out onto our front porch to change the light bulbs. He was standing on a chair to reach the lamp lights while I held the flashlight. Its pretty dark at 8:00 around here and usually going out onto our front porch you see a lot of geckos and some rather large cockroaches up on the ceiling or on the outside walls of the house. Because our outside lights don’t work we haven’t been able to see much else.

Well as I shine my flashlight into the corner for Andy, I see a big black mass out of the corner of my eye. I whip my flashlight around to see a cane spider about the circumference of a soft ball creeping along where the wall meets the ceiling of our porch. Not only is it extremely large, its carrying an egg sac about the size of a quarter. I yell “Andy!”

“Geez! what!?”

About the time he would usually reprimand me for making too big a deal over little bugs - he sees the spider too and yells - “Geez! That things big”.

We hear Suzie yell out the window “Are you okay over there?”

“Nathan you gotta see this!”

Unfortunate for me the spider is hanging onto the wall just above where the screen door opens to get inside.

I’m stuck.

I run around to the back door, yelling “Kill it! I don’t want that thing procreating or leaving its egg sac anywhere near my house.”

I go inside and get our bug spray. Nathan is fascinated and more than willing to kill it with the spray. Suzie finally musters up the courage to come over and have a look too. We watch from the sidelines as Nathan sprays the giant spider. Because of its size it takes quite a lot of ant spray to slow it down. Finally it drops to the floor and separates from the egg sac. Nathan sees that tiny Cane spiders are already starting to emerge from the egg sac. He quickly doses it with spray and steps on it. The spider finally gives up the fight, curls up and dies as well.

I’m a little worried about the few stray baby cane spiders that might have escaped and gather up the courage to come forward and spray the perimeter of the porch next to the house to prevent any spiders from entering the house. Well there’s quite a large crack along the foundation of our porch separating the porch from the house. This is exactly where I sprayed.

No more than 30 seconds passed when the next sequence of events happened.

“Move!”

That’s all Suzie and I needed to hear before we lunged into the house. We turned around and saw that Nathan had trapped a 5 inch long, thick centipede underneath a table leg on the porch.

Just then Andy says “No way! Over there!” A 6 inch long, also very thick centipede emerges from another part of the crack. Nathan climbs over the railing to go after it and kill it. Suzie and I are in the house still and hear:

“Give me the spray”

“ I don’t have the spray”

‘Kill it with the rock”

“Give me the flashlight”

“Do it!, Don’t be such a pansy!”

After about a minute, they tell us its dead and Suzie and I come out to have a look. As we’re peering over the railing looking at it, Andy yells “Look out!”

We again, run into the house, and look back to see another 5 inch centipede scurry past where our feet had been. More shuffling of feet out side, patio furniture moving around and yells back and forth from Andy and Nathan deciding whether to spray it or cut off its head and the third centipede of the night is also killed.

Whew!

While Andy was getting photo documentation , Suzie and I spent the next 15 minutes online researching centipedes, including what they eat, how painful the bite is, where they hide, and how to get rid of them! Everyone says, “Just cut off their heads.” Well lets just say this is easier said than done. Nathan said even when he’d trapped one of them under a table leg, it took a lot of work with a rock to get something that thicks’ head off. All I have to say is – I’m not going out onto the porch at night again with a flashlight. Ignorance is bliss.