Wednesday, September 27, 2006

Kissing Another 10 Years Goodbye

Woke up this morning to find this...


about 6 inches from my face.

It's a Spider Cricket (or a Camel Cricket or a Cave Cricket, depending on who you ask - or a Jurassic Cricket if you ask me. I wouldn't though because I make stuff up).

It's approximately 7 inches long and weighs 12 lbs with a stinger in the back and fangs in the front armed with deadly venom. It will eat your face off in the night or jump right in your eye if you're awake and poke it with it's fangs to suck out your Eyeball Jelly.

(Or, if you're interested in a more truthful if dull description, you could ask the North Carolina State University what they think.)

This is a creature that scares the bejeezus out of me. They are impossible to remove from my house because they have hydraulicly loaded springs in their legs and they jump about 14 feet when I try to approach them with a Kleenex mushed up in my clawlike fist. I can't smoosh them because they are so big that the amount of goop they would leave on my floor would look like a CSI crime scene for years to come. I can only talk nicely to them and hope that when I turn on the lights that they freak out and jump back behind the washing machine where they belong and we can continue to live copaseticly for ever and ever or until I move out and my unsuspecting renters move in and he becomes their problem.

Not really...

I'll leave them a note telling them his name is Conan.

13 comments:

Brenda said...

ew... ew.... ew... creepy crawly and doesn't even chirp!

Anonymous said...

Holy shit!!!! If you need further explanation of the amount of trauma such a post causes me just ask Annie and Pat about the roaches. I seriously did not need to know that there was yet another bug (and frankly, lets face it, I think bug is quite an understatement here)for me to be pathologically terrified of. I am so impressed that you would even consider approaching them armed with only a kleenex that I might send you a bravery medal of some sort!

Irish Eyes said...

I can't believe you are going back to sleep in that bed tonight.

I am so scared of this bud I can't continue typing.

Paige said...

Right?!

When I saw him I screamed and flailed about until he jumped off the bed. But then, when I came to my senses and realized that he was out of sight but not gone, I tried to find him. No dice. He's still in there somewhere.

Maybe a nightcap...

Michelle said...

That has to be a horrible way to wake up!!

I can't look at the pic anymore.
*shudder*

Paige said...

UPDATE!!!

T just went in to take a shower (in the kids bath because ours still isn't finished) (but that's a whole other rant), and killed Conan*. YAY!!! Now. As long as his extended family stays 2 flights down in the laundry room where they belong, we shall coexist peacefully.

I may leave him on the stairs for a few days as warning to those who dare to hop up. You know - like in a Curiosity Killed the Cricket sort of fable.

*I'm assuming that it was Conan. Don't be all, "what if that wasn't Conan, but an impostor and the real Conan is still lurnking under your bed to bite your face off" because I will go all Girlfight on your ass and punch you in the nose. I need to believe it was Conan.

Candi said...

You try to kill them? I do not understand. Why don't you just get D like I do when there is a large looming object that has the word spider or cricket (or centipede) in the title???

Speaking of which, can you send him out? It is banana spider season and I have a doozy for him to send to spider hell (there is no spider heaven).

John said...

I would move away towards a climate more discriminating towards insects.

Ugh. I feel gross just looking at Conan. You should stomp it.

Anonymous said...

Ah, yes, something to love about Virginia. We had them in the crawl space under our house in VA Beach. Hated them! Big icky, ew, gross - don't they look like the alien that Will Smith punched out in Independence Day?!

sarah doow said...

Oh good God. I feel like *I* should move house in an attempt to get further away from it!

Anonymous said...

Farwell big ugly scary spider. Hey remember when you killed the big black wall crawling spider at my house on Liberty Lane. I screamed and ran from it, you on the other hand picked up the broom and a can of Raid , and BOOM it was DEAD. Thank you my brave friend.

Nina said...

Hey all. I have a teacher that eats my lunch period every day and the other day she stated that she fed "it" chicken salad. And that she doesn't have the "heart to kill it". I asked her, out of pure dumbassness, what she was talking about because it sounded like a spider or something close to it. She said yes, it was, and that it's body had to be the size of a quarter, not counting the legs. She says it is camping out near her front porch and that "it" comes out around the same time, like it knows it is going to get fed by her. How freakin' gross is that? It is an outdoor spider acting as her pet for Pete's sake. EEEWWWWWW!

Paige said...

Ok, Betty! Are you happy?

Chris - Really. You can't blame her. Anyway, you were probably too busy surfing gay porn to help a girl out.

LIZ! I do remember that and think of it whenever I see a ginormous spider. I don't think I've seen one that big since. Remember the girls screaming? :) I'm here for you. :)

Nina..... Actually, I think that's pretty cool. Weird, but cool. But I can be like that. :)