28 November 2007

Raid This First

At one time in my life, I lived in Western Colorado. We lived in high desert but up in the mountains, about 4500 feet above sea level. Very pretty and quiet where we lived but we also had our share of critters.

I recall coming home one day with two toddlers in tow. Up the stairs we went, my big pregnant belly making me waddle and grow increasingly tired. My eyes leveled on the wall as I reached the top. I noticed a black spider clinging to the living room wall. A black widow spider.

I can handle birthing 9lb kids. I had two of them without any drugs. I can hunt, fish, eat weird food, fly in a plane, body surf, ski downhill like my hair was on fire...heck, I've even survived a serious close encounter with a rattlesnake. But spiders? NO.

Me + spiders = pantywaist.

"Hello? Terminator Bob?"

You better believe I called him on the spot but first, if you are wondering why most men I refer to on this blog are called Bob, it is not any mind-blowing sheer coincidence. I Bob everything.

It can be Hitman Bob, Movie Theater Bob, Oil Man Bob, House Buyer Bob, Idiot Driver Bob (that's pretty much every day). Bobbing things is great fun.

Terminator Bob happened to be in the area and within the hour I was face to face with an boyish looking, denim-clad man with an undeniable affection for bug killin' and country music. Bob must not have been in the bug killing for long, evident by a deplorable lack of dead bug pictures on his vehicle.

Which makes me wonder...Could I trust a Bug Terminator without upright and thriving bugs painted on his truck, fender to fender? Regardless, Bob's face lit up like a Christmas tree when I handed him the ominous black widow jar. It was blatantly clear he had great enjoyment in being the insect world's Angel of Death. I even think he was back lit and had a halo. Or was that antenna?

~cue heavenly chorus~

Terminator Bob was my hero.

If all men could just be more like Bob. I would dedicate a wing of my mansion in his honor and name all future children 'Bob'.

Terminator Bob also turned out to be my worst nightmare for he opened a can, and sadly, it wasn't Raid.

Bob was a pest guru, and grinned as he walked around the basement, nodding his head silently as I told him my woes. He smelled like Stetson and bug spray, and wore giant work overalls that I suspected were covering Wrangler jeans and a turkey platter belt buckle.

The explanation for my infestation was simple. Prior Homeowner Bob decided at some point that the basement was a climate-controlled idyllic environment for breeding rabbits, guinea pigs, birds, and probably small farm animals that kept to themselves, like goats. The cages were stored next to open sacks of rabbit food. And gerbil food. And bird food. And any other food they could squeeze in the family room.

The Terminator part of Bob unearthed a goldmine of pests in my basement. Within the week he had decimated a nest of mice, annihilated wolf spiders, sent ants to Ant Heaven, and properly killed off a number of American cockroaches, leaving them on their backs. It was just like the truck murals, but with added leg twitching.

Bob informed me there are kinds of cockroaches. Huh?

These weren't the little brown German cockroaches, these were the flying kind that enjoyed coming up through the sewers. These were the sewer hellions that lived for screams from your person as all two inches of their crunchy black body would flatten under the weight of your bare heel in the middle of the night.

...and do they ever squish.

The last of our unusual entomology lesson was finding camel/sun spiders in the laundry room. How I hated finding those. They move a lot like scorpions without a tail, are white and clearish, but are not of the spider family either. They are grotesque little buggers.

I came to the conclusion: Terminator Bob was worth every last shiny penny, but he needs that giant plastic dead bug on his truck to be taken seriously. Bless his bug killing soul.

~Bee loves bees though

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have Dentist Stepdad Bob and Father-in-law Bob.

The dead bugs on the truck are so un-PC. I love it.

Anonymous said...

Ah yes...the "joys" of living in the desert west...
I've stopped counting my encounters with black widows, they are so many... I've even had one crawl on me. We've had all kinds of weird spiders in our house, but our former owner (who actually was named Bob) did not feed all the pests, thank God! Still...I have to say that OK is worse, with the brown recluse and scorpions.

Now I've given myself a good dose of the heebie-jeebies, I'm going to be imagining things crawling on me all day....ick!

Anonymous said...

We seem to get lots of spiders in the summer, but with all this rain right now, I am hoping they are being washed out into the street and into the river. Do Salmon eat spiders?
Thanks so much for a huge dose of the creepy crawlies.

Anonymous said...

Holy Christ woman..the whole time I am reading that, I feel like I have bugs on my legs, I am looking behind me on my wall making sure there are non in sight..

I DID not click on your pic, and how dare u try and scare me..

good golly woman..

I hate spiders and bug of ANY kind, be it lady bugs, flies,ants, anything with more then two legs...or anything with NO legs..

ok..there..


Hey, when ya wanna start my winter template? I am ready when u are...did u ever get my payment?

Anonymous said...

What an adventurous life you have lived! You could have hosted a pest safari in your basement and charged people money to see them!

By the way...Did you leave the buzz? I noticed your profile is gone, and you have disappeared from my list of friends! Waaahhhh.

Anonymous said...

That's a lot of Bobs.

I am scared of that basement even from a distance.

I am scared of spiders. I am terrified of those big ones. I will not be going to Iraq.

Anonymous said...

Yikes who is microwaving bugs? And who gets to clean up after...

Perhaps this bug is more your style.

Anonymous said...

I've heard that there are two secrets to them there camel spiders. First, only try to mess with the one-hump variety, as the two-hump ones have twice as much stored venom. Two, they taste great if you boil them and serve them with butter, like you would a lobster.

Anonymous said...

Uh... Yeah. I think Terminator Bob would be my new best friend too. Yikes! And EWWWWW!!!

Anonymous said...

I am so not even clicking that link...

Anonymous said...

Aggghhhh I have lived in Hawaii Mississippi and Georgia. I have had enough Palmetto Bugs to last me a life time.

Anonymous said...

Oh, don't let Shannon read this. She hates spiders, too! Me, I think they have their uses. I leave the ones in my window alone. They're great bug catchers. But if they get anywhere near me, they're goners!

You left the Buzz? Is it something I did? I'm sorry. :o(

Anonymous said...

I once had a fish named Bob. I knew he was gone when he started Bob-ing. Ha.

Anonymous said...

I name everyone Joe.

I have the heebie jeebies now! We had some strange spider-like creatures in our old house. They liked the moist environment of the bathrooms. I called the cricket spiders. Kind of a weird hybrid looking thing. Very gross.


I have a vivid memory of one Saturday morning when Carly was a toddler. (approx 3 yrs old) I was in the other room probably folding laundry and heard a blood curdling scream. You know, the one that you know that will be accompanied by blood or a terrible wound of some sort?? I bolted to her room to check on her and do you know what I found? She was standing in the center of the room wih her left arm extended looking at a cricket that had hopped onto her arm. She was paralyzed with fear. I came to her rescue and disposed of the evil cricket. She hates crickets to this day.

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