I just don't get snakes or spiders

So there I am today happily sitting on my ride on mower, my neighbours Bose headset on my head, making me look like Prince Charles ears are sewn on the side of my head! Jamming out to what ever it was. When I look down and there is a snake!!!

Ok I don't do snakes or spiders but especially not snakes as they are just sneeky little bastards, they dont move as a normal thing should, and I'm sure they could easily slide up my pant leg!!

I can easily take a rat, mouse,frog, lizard, mole in my hands no problem, infact with my small zoo there have been numerous times I have saved something from the jaws of one of my cats. But I just don't touch or really want to be anywhere near snakes.

So back to my adventure with one today. So the mood is set, I'm jamming and mowing. I look down and there is a snake slithering around the bottom of a tree trunk. Now I hasten to point out that the tree in question is right next to my bedroom window! Guess who won't be opening the windows later this year when it cools down a bit!!

Well my inital thought was to run, but I couldn't as was sitting on my mower, but I didn't think about this till I had begun go get my ass up off the seat, the mower has an automatic cut off if you leave it running and in gear with blades going. Well it suddenly begins to stutter, when I realize that if it stops now I am going to be right next to the snake!!

So I sit my ass down which causes the mower to take off again with a really neck lash wipping force, which resulted in me being thrown forward over the steering wheel and nearly coming off the damn thing over the front of the mower!

Now all of this is happening in a matter of seconds and the soundtrack to it would have sounded like "snake!, fuck.. oh shit.. uggh, oh that hurt, fuck!!" Not a pretty sight for anyone who happened to be watching me at that moment, but I would imagine amusing!!

After that fright I had to return a number of times back to the area around the tree, all the time the hairs on my arms standing up, my eyes darting back and forth, peeled for Mr Slithery!!

I did see him 2 more times, my reaction not as before but still with mumbling swear words and feelings of goosebumps over my body of something, probably the snake, moving over my grave! I hate to say I did think of trying to run him over with the mower. But I try to kill as little as possible as I pass through life, I figure it's a good way to earn Karma points. So I let him be. But I now will not be going out in that area at night with no shoes on!!

As I said I have a fear of snakes and spiders. Just quickly let me tell you about my one run in with a spider in my bathroom a couple of years ago.

I live in the country, my house is a manufactured home, so the bottom of the house is off the ground. Having been under the house myself for stupid reasons over the 8 years I have lived here, I know that there are lots of big spider webs under there. I have never actually seen the spiders that make them till this night.

So I walk into the bathroom, Let me set the scene for you as soon as you walk in there is a seperate room to the left with the toilet in it and to the right the 2 sinks and 2 mirrors. I sit down on the loo, and no sooner had I started doing what I had gone in there to do! I happen to look up at the wall above the sinks. There is the biggest spider I have ever seen in my life. To be honest he could well have been a tarantula suffering from alopecia!!! he was that big, of course I'm assuming it was a he, I don't know how you would sex a spider and can't say that it is on my list of things to accomplish before I die!! But you get the idea, if I had the balls to hold him/her in my hand I am pretty sure he/she would have covered my palm!!

After seeing the spider which I hasten to add is over by the wall nearest to the door that I have to use to get out of! I was thankful that I was already on the toilet if you get my drift. So finished what I was doing, the whole time keeping an eye on my newly acquired 8 legged friend.

He/she didn't move but I am pretty sure that he/she was watching me, watching him/her. Then as I come out of the toilet and make to duck through the door, the little shit began to run along the wall above the doorway I was heading for. Then he/she stopped right above the door!! Ok this is my conversation to mysefl as best I can recall.

Ear splitting scream.."Fuck!! Oh shit, ok you little fucker just let me get through the door ok?" another girly cry as I ducked through the door. My heart beating a mile a minuet. I was away from it.

But hey wait up this is my bathroom en suite. I need to get it out of there because I can not sleep knowing that he/she is in there. Now remember a couple of paragraphs up I said that I try to kill as little as possible as I pass through life! Ok well let me add a clause to that rule. That shall only apply to snakes, spiders, bugs that live outside. I mean come on that is their habitat, it's me that's invading their space, so therefore I have no right to kill them.

But if your in my house! Well you damn well bet I'm killing your ass! So I went to get some bug spray. I didn't have anything for spiders specifically, but I did have Raid fly spray. Hey it's a bug, I'm sure it's lack of wings are not going to stop the killing effects of what ever is in the spray. So I headed back to the bathroom, the whole time mumbling to myself, I'm coming to get you, you little bastard.

I peek up under the door jamb to were I had last seen him/her!! Oh fuck it had moved!!! I then looked at the walls to the side of the doorjamb, nothing there. So I inched my way into the bathroom with my fly spray and my sneaker. Oh did I mention I took the sneaker in as backup? Well I did! So I'm entering like I should be a cop on a tv show, sweeping all walls and ceilings. But no spider to be seen!!

Major dilema. What to do. I can't assume that he/she has gone. But I also can not live in my house knowing that he/she may come back out when I am asleep and venture from the bathroom to my bedroom and my face!!!!!!!

Close the bathroom door Kate, I hear you say. Well in a normal house that would work, but in manufactured houses they leave a gap below the doors to help the circulation!! At least that was what the builder told me, maybe he just thought I was guillable and he had fucked up the doors and that was the better way to tell me!!

Regardless closing the door would not work. So I had to find it. I suddenly became Kate the spider hunter!! Ok, I didn't. I became Kate the lesbian trying to act tough brandishing a can of raid and a dirty sneeker and trying not to cry like a little baby.

Then I saw him/her out the corner of my eye to the left. It was sitting on the wall near my shower. I took aim and fired a stream of spray at him/her drowning the big 8 legged freak. But did he/she cough, splutter and fall to the ground gasping his/her last breath? Did it fuck, it started running up the wall and across the ceiling to come above me!!!

Well I continued to spray at it, begining to think that maybe there is a difference in spiders and flys after all, because this spray was sure not assisting the 8 legged freak to die, if anything it was like pcp for spiders because it seemed to make him/her stronger and more invincible!! Well after a second or two he/she began to falter and then turned around and went back to the wall and just sat there!

I approached it very slowly my weapons brandished ahead of me. I gave it another blast of the spray. I had sprayed so much in such a confined space that if it didn't kill the spider there was a good possiblity that it would kill me instead! But I sprayed again and this time it lurched up on to the ceiling, began to run and then dropped onto the ground right infront of me!!!!!!!!

FUCK!!!!!!!!!!!! Well I turned and ran through the bathroom door screaming like I have never screamed before in my life. I took a split second to glance over my shoulder and sure enough it looked stunned from it's fall but it was still moving towards me.

My instant reaction is to get off the ground a.s.a.p. So I jumped up on my bed, forgetting that the ceiling fan above my bed was on!! Well I missed the blade hitting me uspside the head by milimeters!!
But you know the choice between
1) decapatation by home appliance or
2) death by fright due to biggest spider in the world?

Well let me think about this!


Ok I'll take number 1 Alex for 1000!!

When I had recovered from my near death by ceiling fan I looked back to the bathroom floor. There he/she was, crawling towards me still, but this time with the stagger of a drunken spider, actually not sure how you could tell really with all those legs! Then it slowed and one of its' legs began to drag, but it kept coming at me. I'm sure I must have looked a sight through his/her little acrachnid eyes. Stood up on the bed screaming every swear word I knew and some I didn't!! Brandishing my near empty can of spider pcp and my sneaker, the blades of death still spinning behind my head!! But then he/she lost the use of another leg, then another, and then it just stopped, took one last glance at me, and died! I jumped off the bed and beat the shit out of it with the sneaker untill it was a mass of goo!! Knowing with each hit that I was loosing Karma points, but hey that's ok I'll help an old lady across the road tomorrow to make them back up!!

So there is my fear of snakes and spiders.