Things that go bump in the night

Things always seem worse in the middle of the night, when you should be sleeping but you can't. Problems seem unsolvable. Weird things seem weirder. Scary things are much scarier. Things that would seem ridiculous in daylight seem possible, even likely, when you're alone in the dark.

I'm a city girl who doesn't relish any encounter with wild animals, small or large. But I live in the suburbs. and although Silver Spring is a pretty close-in, urbanized suburb, it's still home to lots of animals. And I'm a fair-minded person. As far as I'm concerned, it's their turf just as much as mine. I'm not thrilled to run into foxes in daylight, or swarming bats at dusk, or rocket-launched frogs; or snakes, real or imaginary. But I acknowledge their right to our shared habitat.

I have to draw the line somewhere, though. There are limits, you know?

A few days ago, a neighborhood friend posted a picture of a very large paw print in her backyard snow. And according to commenters on the post, the print belonged to a bear. And according to the Internet, bears are not at all unheard-of visitors in Silver Spring. And according to me, WHAT? WHAT? WHAT? What, as my 17-year-old son says, in the ACTUAL HELL?

I mean, really. Bats and squirrels and deer and raccoons and foxes? Fine. But bears? This isn't Yellowstone, for crying out loud. A bear. A BEAR.

Clearly, it was time to get off social media for the day, and so I did. And I didn't give the bear another thought. Until I woke up at 3 in the morning for my regularly scheduled anxiety attack, and realized that I could never again go outside unarmed. A BEAR! I've seen "The Revenant," and I am in no way equipped to survive a similar encounter with a bear in the wild, even if the wild is the DMV suburbs.

Having resolved never to leave the house on foot again, I went back to sleep. And then I woke up. And the sun was out. And the snow had melted, not completely, but enough that roaming bears wouldn't have had enough snow in which to leave a decent footprint. This made a difference, for some reason. Even if the bear was hiding somewhere, I wouldn't have to see its footprint. Out of sight, out of mind. So I went running, picking my way around the remaining patches of ice and noting likely options for shelter if the bear were to appear. And I returned home unscathed after an uneventful morning run.

*****
It's Monday now, so warm that the snow has completely melted, leaving mist to rise from the sidewalks in the bright sun this morning. Maybe a rodent is just as reliable a predictor of weather conditions as NOAA. And speaking of the wild kingdom, I haven't seen so much as a squirrel today. Not even a pigeon.

*****
Tuesday: I worked from home today. It's not my normal WFH day, but I wasn't feeling well. I don't have the kind of job that lets a sick person just rest and get better (who does?) but staying at home helps. I'm still not 100 percent, but I'm better than I was.

I'm torn about the State of the Union. On the one hand, I'd like to continue with my Trump embargo. I just don't want to look at his face or hear his voice. On the other hand, I want to maintain some level of informed-ness, some situational awareness. Plus it'll be fun to watch the reaction when he declares the state of emergency, as I expect he will.

I should call the White House. Maybe they can do something about the bear.  Some sort of neighborhood enclosure, to keep the people on one side and the bear on the other. It doesn't have to be a wall; any sort of physical barrier will do. Steel slats, maybe, or a chain-link fence.

*****
Wednesday: So that was interesting. No state of emergency, and even the Democratic women in white were forced to applaud--standing, no less--when the President spoke about the record number of women in Congress. And even I was moved, once again, by the story of Alice Johnson. Criminal justice reform is long overdue, and if there's any reason to be hopeful, it's that even some of the most conservative Republicans are championing the idea that our incarceration rates represent a sinful waste of human life and potential. I'm happy for Ms. Johnson, and I'll give credit where it's due, even if it's due to Donald Trump and Jared Kushner and Kim Kardashian.

I fell asleep before the thing was over, and didn't get to see Stacey Abrams give the Democratic response. And the usual post-Trump-speech fact checks gave him better truthfulness ratings than he usually earns. Apparently, at least half of what he said was actually true.

On the other hand, he loses points for the "war and investigations" remark, which doesn't even make any sense. So it's a C-plus.

Yes, that's right, I'm giving Trump a C-plus. Factor that into his GPA, accounting for every other speech and public performance since January 2017, and he's still failing.

And if a bear wandering around Silver Spring isn't a damn national emergency, then I don't know what is.

*****
It's Thursday now, and a week into February. My trip to Ireland is just over a month away, and I'm figuring out how to pack. I thought about trying to manage the week with a carry-on alone, but I don't know. I have some planning to do.

And why does a kid jump into my seat on the couch every single time I get up?

I bought a travel handbag, and I'm not sure if I like it or not. I think I do. I want all of the handbags. It's a problem. Next week, I'll discuss my packing strategy and my obsessive-compulsive what-to-bring decision process. There might be flow charts, or maybe a Tableau visualization.

It would be nice to be one of those people who don't panic about every minor detail and who can take a trip without spending weeks worrying about what to bring and what to leave home.

But you know what? I almost completely forgot about the bear. Sometimes my gnat-like attention span and my obsessive overthinking work in my favor. There is always a silver lining.

Passage of time

Sunday: I always feel like I won't have time to write during the week, and I always manage to find time, but this time, I really feel like I won't have time (and that's time four times in one sentence, not counting this parenthetical insertion, which brings it to six). So I'll start tonight.

We're watching "I, Tonya." It's a great movie, and although I couldn't decide whom to root for as Best Supporting Actress (I loved Laurie Metcalf in "Ladybird," but I've been a huge Allison Janney fan since "The West Wing"), I think that the Academy made the right decision.

I followed the Tonya/Nancy story very very closely in 1994. I was sure then that Tonya knew more than she admitted; now, I'm not so sure. Even then, though, I felt some sympathy for her. I was a working-class girl, too. I couldn't ice skate to save my soul from Hell, but if I had been a figure skater, I wouldn't have fit in with the sparkling ice princesses either. I find it hard to believe that a skating judge admitted to Tonya that he and other judges were deliberately lowballing her scores because they wanted to force her out of the sport. But I find it very easy to believe that they actually did lowball her scores to try to force her out of the sport. I remember watching her skate, and hearing commentators say things like "some have called her Trashy Tonya." Those "some" of course, being the commentators, who could thus call Tonya Harding trashy without actually calling her trashy.

Monday: I'm wearing glasses now. I normally wear contact lenses all day long, but my eyes were badly strained today. Eyestrain has been a problem for me for some time, but it's gotten worse. I look at a screen for hours at a time, and by the end of the day, my eyes are burned out. By 8 pm tonight, I literally couldn't see anymore. The glasses feel much better.

I've worn contact lenses for ten years. Every so often, though, I think about just wearing glasses all the time. I don't really like the way they look on me, but it would be nice to just put glasses on in the morning and take them off at night--no cleaning, no soaking, no worry about running out of lenses. On the other hand, I don't know what I'd do about sunglasses. Prescription sunglasses, I guess. Or maybe those glasses that just turn dark when you're outside?

My mom has worn glasses since she was six years old. When I was growing up, we almost never saw her without them. They became part of the architecture of her face; part of its basic structure. She changed glasses every two years or so; at one point, she even had those upside-down frames that Allison Janney wears in "I, Tonya." One of my fears about wearing glasses is that I'd tire of the ones I chose and would want to buy new ones every three months. One of my hopes is that the glasses would become so much a part of my face that I'd look a little weird when I took them off, just like my mom.

Tuesday: I keep losing things. It's spring, season of massive anxiety and panic attacks, and I tend to be forgetful and not to mince words, stupid, at this time of year. This afternoon, I came this close (imagine my thumb and forefinger about 3/4 of an inch apart) to calling my bank and telling them to cancel my debit card. Then I found it in my pocket, where I'd put it after filling my gas tank minutes earlier. I left my computer charging cord at my desk at the government site two days in a row; following the day on which I left my phone at home. I keep dropping things. I keep tripping, and bumping my head, which has probably already sustained as many blows as it can take. And now, even Microsoft Word thinks that it can mess with me. I might not have Google Docs on lockdown yet, but Word is my bitch, and I won't allow it to disrespect me.

Wednesday: Well, that took a turn, didn't it? Meanwhile, in the Day in the Life department, Shit Just Got Real division, this person is now a licensed driver in the state of Maryland:

It's always later than you think. 

Thursday: My second-ever playoff game ended with an overtime loss for the Capitals. True confession: I don't actually care that much if they win in the playoffs, although I know I'll be really happy when they eventually win a Stanley Cup. As much as I love hockey, I like the routine of the regular season much more than the intensity of the playoffs. And even for a fan, it's hard to sustain playoff excitement for over two months, which is how long it takes. It's too much.

That's right, you better run. 

Saturday: Maryland has become the home of six-month winters that end abruptly with summer. It snowed a week ago; today, we're in shorts and flip-flops. At least we haven't seen or heard the mouse. Maybe it likes the weather and wants to stay outside. Or maybe I scared it last week. That's probably it.




Sunday. Maryland weather: "I'll see your crazy ass in Hell." Thanks, Colin Jost.

To the mattresses

Wednesday, you feel like Tuesday. And Google Docs: That little hide yesterday’s six pages of meeting notes as a two-days-late April Fool’s joke? Totally not funny. Just one more indicator of the pressing need to figure out G-Suite and Chrome OS, and PDQ. I’ll get to it.

The mouse has returned (a new mouse, of course); and the efforts to catch and kill it are ascending to new heights, or descending to new lows, depending on your perspective. Although the low-tech, non-violent approach was successful last time, the new mouse visitor appears to be notably brighter than his deceased predecessor and he (or likely she) has thus far thwarted every mouse-catching effort. My husband has tried a combination of sticky traps, traditional spring-release traps, and a variety of bait. The space underneath the kitchen sink is now nearly spotless, having been thoroughly cleaned, and it's also a virtual killing field for mice. However, we continue to see evidence that the mouse has been able to gnaw its way through the door-mounted garbage bag that hangs on the inside of the cabinet door and to then enjoy a late-night buffet.

So my husband bought an electronic mouse trap, which I promise is a real, manufactured item, available for sale at Home Depot and other retailers, for an obscene and ridiculous price. Well, it’s $40, but $40 for a mousetrap is absurdly expensive. Even as he bought the silly thing, he was almost sure that it wouldn’t work, but he was determined to at least try it. Meanwhile, he rigged the traps and the garbage bag in a way that appeared virtually mouse-proof, except to the mouse, who easily picked her way around the landmines.

So now we have a night-vision deer camera. Do you think I’m kidding? I’m not. Here it is.

It's the fatigue-green plastic thing on the left. Note that there are
no fewer than four mousetraps here, and those are only the ones visible. 

I didn’t even ask how much this cost, because I would rather not know, and because it wouldn't matter to my husband, who would pretty much pay any price to figure out how this stupid mouse was managing to evade his carefully constructed obstacle course of death. Last week while shopping for my son’s baseball pants, he wandered over to the hunting section at Dick’s and there it was: An infrared light deer camera, or whatever the hell technology allows you to take video of wildlife under cover of near total darkness. He was sold.

He caught some footage of the thing last night, but we could only see part of its body (not sure which is worse--the head or the tail--we could see its icky little beady-eyed face but not its revolting tail) so we know that the mouse was at large last night, but we’re still not sure how it got through the cabinet and avoided the traps. The camera has been re positioned in the hope that we’ll get footage that shows the whole sequence: Entry into the cabinet from whatever tiny hole or crevice remains open after the extensive hole-plugging efforts, dodge and weave through the minefield, mouse middle finger at the camera, trash feast, exit stage left.

Or maybe we’ll just house train the vile creature and learn to live with it. If it didn’t leave droppings behind, then I could maybe, possibly coexist with it. As long as I didn’t have to see it. Or hear it. Or maintain any conscious awareness of its existence under my roof.

Never mind: It has to get out of my house, or die. We’re going to the mattresses.

A creature was stirring

We have a mouse. Not a pet, but an unwelcome rodent invader.

Gross.

We last had a mouse during a cold snap in 2011 or 2012, and we hadn't seen or heard one since. Then one day last week, I heard a sound that could only be described as "scurrying," but whatever was scurrying stayed out of sight. The next day, my husband said that he saw a gray streak flash by; and then the day after that, I saw the actual live-in-the-flesh mouse.

So gross.

My husband called the exterminator, and they came out and set traps. Something, as I pointed out, that we could easily have done ourselves, saving the almost $250 per year that we pay the exterminator (but that's a story for another day).  After a few days, to no one's surprise, the mouse remained at large. So my husband took matters into his own hands, and built a better mousetrap.

*****

A long time ago, when the boys were little, the three of them were obsessed with keeping the rabbits out of our tomatoes. They'd set Havahart traps in the backyard, and in the mornings, they would drive to a park and let the rabbits go. This went on all summer, until one night, we left the gate open by accident, and some deer came in and ate all of the tomatoes. With the tomato crop ravaged, there was no longer any reason to force the rabbits into exile. We packed away the traps, and the rabbits roamed freely once again.

Another battle in the long war between my husband and the rodents involved unauthorized squirrel access to his beloved birdfeeder. After a few days of studying the squirrels and their habits, he fashioned a squirrel-proof birdfeeder out of an actual birdfeeder, several frisbees, and part of an umbrella. I can't describe it any better than that. Use your imagination. The thing actually worked, though it looked ridiculous hanging from the tree in our front yard.

*****
So the mouse is round three. There are mouse traps everywhere, and my husband has constructed barriers for the doorways, using cardboard boxes. The barriers have small holes, baited and booby-trapped. Wile E. Korean is quite sure that the mouse will be irresistibly drawn to the hole, and will run through it, only to be inextricably trapped on the other side.

Did you think I was kidding? 

It's now the third morning since these makeshift walls were erected (I have to step over them to get through the doorway) and we haven't trapped a mouse yet. I make my husband get up to check, because I don't want to be the first person to see a trapped mouse at 6 in the morning.

*****

We finally caught the mouse the day after I wrote this. Not a moment too soon, as I'd begun to worry about new and extreme measures threatened by the male members of the household. I had already caught my 16-year-old son patrolling the kitchen, armed with a loaded BB gun. ("Mom. Trust me. It ran under the stove, and it has to come out eventually. When it does, I'll pop a cap in its ass.") Again, teenage boys are idiots, in case you missed my last post. Meanwhile, I'd begun to be afraid to walk through my own house in the dark, for fear that I'd end up in a bear trap, or hanging upside down by my ankle from a zip line.

So the stockings are hung by the chimney with care, and humans are the only creatures stirring, and that's the way we like it. Merry Christmas.

That's not my name

I've written occasionally about my run-ins with wildlife. It's usually deer, with the occasional snake, real or imagined. And squirrels. And spiders. And a few birds here or there. That's usually as far as it goes. I live in the suburbs, after all. 

Last Sunday, I went for a walk on the Matthew Henson Trail. There's a vernal pool on a little side trail that leads back to the street. The county parks department posts signs near vernal pools, urging passersby to avoid disturbing them. As if I'd touch a gigantic puddle of standing water encrusted with green scum. But the green scum isn't the grossest thing about this particular pond. The grossest thing is the frogs. 

No, I'm not afraid of frogs. I'm not especially fond of them, but they don't bother me. Unless, of course, they launch themselves like missiles out of a scummy green pond and right toward my unsuspecting head. Picture frogs being shot out of cannons. Picture yourself at a sporting event, and it starts to rain frogs when you're expecting rolled-up t-shirts. 

Yeah. 

So, I made a mental note to give that little corner of nature the widest berth possible from now on, and I went on my way. And that's all there was to that. 

Until Tuesday. 

Which is when I went for another walk, at about 6:45 or so. It was still pretty much broad daylight at 6:45, but dusk falls earlier now. And dusk means one thing.

BATS.

I'm not afraid of frogs, or spiders, or most of the other creepier wildlife species, but I do not like rodents at all. I know that bats are generally harmless, and that they control the insect population, and blah, blah, blah. They're also flying rodents with fangs, and if I never see one again, it'll be too soon.

Bats are always out at night around here, and normally, they don't bother me, because I don't see them. The sky is dark, the bats are dark and they blend right in, and out of sight is out of mind (usually). But at dusk on Tuesday, the sky was a stunning shade of dark bluish gray, and the outline of the bats (hundreds of them!) was clear and visible against the blue-gray backdrop. They didn't dive-bomb me or anything, but they swirled and circled just a few yards overhead, and I pretty much ran the last few blocks home.

No run-ins with wild animals on Wednesday. Only a mysterious, one-word text message--STASI-- from an unknown number. Why Stasi? Who would text me this? I responded "Sorry, but who is this?"  but whoever it was didn't reply. It was probably a person who doesn't know how to spell Stacy. Or Staci. Or Stacey. None of which are names that I answer to. Or maybe it really was the Stasi. After all, why would they identify themselves?

I'm still in the middle of The Crisis Years, which is taking entirely too long to finish; and I'm heartily sick of the Cold War, normally one of my favorite topics. I wonder what the members of Ex-Comm would have thought about smart phones. Or sonic attacks.  Or projectile frogs, which could probably be weaponized. Or the fact that Castro outlived all of them.

I think I need to get out of my own head for a bit. I think I need to read something else. 

What are you talking about? I'm in a great mood.

Monday: As I wrote here, just over two years ago, it's only a matter of time before the deer turn predator, and I think that time is running out. I took a walk around my neighborhood tonight, and I'm pretty sure that the two deer on my neighbor's lawn, who stared at me, holding their ground, would have attacked me if I hadn't crossed the street. Minutes later, I saw a to-the-death battle between two angry squirrels, and then a stray cat squared off at me as if to warn me off its turf, which apparently consists of the whole neighborhood.

It's so rare to see a cat at large anymore. When I was growing up in Philadelphia, people let their cats out during the day. The cats would wander the neighborhood freely until sundown, and then return home. Occasionally, someone would have to go out and hunt for their cat, but most of the neighborhood cats seemed to have unerring homing instincts, and they'd just show up for dinner. People don't let their cats out anymore. And I guess I don't blame them, what with the predatory deer.

Anyway, what is this? Wild Kingdom? Sheesh.

Tuesday: It's fine once you get in. That's what people always say as you dip one tentative toe into the icy cold swimming pool. They won't shut up about it, in fact. "Really. I was really cold at first, but now it feels great. My lips are always blue. It's a medical thing. It's fine, I swear. Get in." So I got in, and swam for a while. And I got used to it. And it was still freezing damn cold, but it didn't matter after I had relinquished my will to live.

Thursday: Is there any possible excuse for any person younger than 85 to hold up the line at the Safeway by WRITING A CHECK OMG for groceries? That was a rhetorical question, of course, but there's nothing stopping you from answering it, as long as your answer is NO, NO, A HUNDRED TIMES NO, FOR GOD'S SAKE.

Standing behind someone writing a check ("What's today's date? What was the amount again? Who do I make it out to? Can I write it for $30 extra? No, wait--maybe $40 extra...") is bad enough. What's worse is standing behind the check-writer in the line manned by the super-friendly, super-entertaining cashier with the running commentary on every facet of life. I must be a misanthrope of the highest order, because every time I end up in his line, the person in front of me never fails to tell him how wonderful he is and how great it is that he's so upbeat and cheerful. And all I want to do is beat him over the head. As I restrained the head-beating urge and willed the check-writing slowpoke to hurry the holy heck up, I noticed a leaflet at the bottom of my cart. "WHERE DO YOU WANT TO SPEND ETERNITY?" was printed in fiery orange and red tones on its glossy black cover.

"Here," I thought. "Right here. I want to spend eternity in the gosh-darn checkout line at the Norbeck Fucking Road Safeway, so aren't I lucky? Because I've been here since the dawn of time and it appears that I'll be here until the sun burns out, and beyond." On my best day, I might have taken that leaflet as a reminder that I do have an immortal soul and that I should maybe take better care of it. But it wasn't my best day.

Saturday: Why did you fail me, Google Drive? Why can't I find the work that I most assuredly finished and saved in the folder where I know I saved it? Please tell me that I don't have to:
A. Rewrite what I already wrote or
B. Lug my 40-pound computer to and from work every day.

I'm normally a good-tempered and mild-mannered person, but technical failures and things not working in general turn me into a flaming torch of rage. I was trying to tear off a sheet of aluminum foil to cover the baking pan of chicken cacciatore that I was about to put in the oven, and the foil tore off in an ever-narrowing spiral, as an ever-widening spiral clung to the roll. I couldn't even. I handed the roll to my husband and said "Fix this please, before I put it through a window." He fixed it, because he knew that I wasn't kidding and that it's easier to stop watching the Redskins and get me some damn aluminum foil than to get a window repaired on a Saturday night.

Computer issues are even worse. I have more than once carried my computer toward the garage, loudly threatening to place it under a rear tire of my car, and then run over it. Someone usually rescues the computer, but one day, it'll be just me and the computer, with no reasonable people between it and the rear tire. Like the predatory deer, it's only a matter of time.

"I'll run it over! I swear I will!"

Sunday: So I just read this over, and I think I'm coming across as the tiniest bit irritable and grouchy. Plankton could take my correspondence course. The panic attacks are back and I'm running on about 12 hours sleep over the past five days, so maybe I'm a little punchy. It'll pass, like everything else does. I think I'll go swimming. It's fine, once you get in.

Curiouser and curiouser

Do you get credit for courage if you bravely approach and walk past what you believe to be a snake, which then turns out not to be a snake?  I was walking this evening, and saw what looked very much like a snake, coiled up in the middle of the road.  I walked toward it, intending to pass it as widely as possible, but to pass it nonetheless. It turned out to be a pair of baseball or golf gloves.  Don't ask me why they looked like a snake; just trust me that they did.  Had they been a snake, they would have bitten me.

*****

Strange things happen sometimes.  Today, a coworker who almost always brings Starbucks to work was instead drinking a homemade smoothie from a reusable travel tumbler.  Another coworker, who usually drinks a homemade smoothie every morning, was instead drinking takeout coffee from Dunkin' Donuts.  The first coworker almost always wears pants; today, she wore a skirt.  I almost always wear skirts; today, I wore pants.  What kind of through-the-looking-glass rabbit hole did I fall into, I wondered.  The rest of the day proceeded without incident, however.  Until the snake.

*****

It's May 18; Memorial Day is just over a week away.  So right now, I'm sitting on my couch wearing a sweater, as a fire crackles away in the fireplace.  The weeks of cold and rain have affected more than my mood; I feel like I have lost track of time and seasons, and am permanently anchored in some London-like place where it's always cool and misty and gray.   People do things that are just slightly off, just slightly out of character.  Things look like other things.  I boldly approach a snake and walk right past it.  Yes, it was an imaginary snake, but I didn't know that at the time.

I dreamed a dream

I woke up at about 4:30 this morning with just one thought: "Hey!  I don't even HAVE a basement!"  This was such an enormous comfort that I fell immediately back to sleep for an hour or so; quite unusual, because a 4:30 wake-up usually means that I'm up for the day.

Some backtracking: I had awakened from a dreadfully vivid and realistic dream about a waterbug infestation in my basement.  They were everywhere, and I was paralyzed by indecision about what to do about them.  Panic and just refuse to ever enter the basement again? No, because in this dream, the kitchen happened to be in the (nonexistent) basement (and this made the infestation that much more horrible.)  Call an exterminator? Well yes, because I wanted to be rid of the bugs, but no, because I was afraid of the pesticides and I was embarrassed to invite an exterminator into my squalid, crawling home.  So I spent the entire dream entering the basement over and over, closing my eyes and turning on the light, and then opening my eyes always a moment too early to avoid the sight of the bugs scurrying for the cover of darkness.

(I realize now that this is at least my third post about bugs or insects, and readers might make the mistaken assumption that I have a particular interest in or particular fear of bugs.  Neither is true.  I have no interest in any bug or insect except to react as necessary to get them out of my way; and although I'm certainly not fond of any form of insect or bug life, I'm also not really that afraid of them.  I have more weird phobias than the DSM-IV even knows about, but I'm pretty bug-neutral.)

So, back to the dream.  My house, as I mentioned, was both vermin-infested and utterly wretched, to the point at which I'd have been ashamed to have anyone see it.  This is far from the case in actual real life.  My house is simple and not especially luxurious, but it's quite clean and pleasant.   Anyone's welcome to visit, any time.  Mi casa es su casa.  I also don't have any particular fear of or aversion to pesticides (although the smell of Raid nauseates me) so I don't know why my dreaming self was so afraid of the exterminator.

One thing about the person in the dream that I did recognize, all too clearly, was her panicked inability to make a decision and take action. I am often paralyzed by indecision about the most minor everyday things.  Decisions about what to wear, what to cook for dinner, what to do during the thirty minutes before I have to pick a kid up from school or an activity can and often do send me into a hair-pulling tailspin of anxiety.

Anyway, I woke up and have had a fairly productive day, more so than average.  I'm even less interested in dream analysis than I am in bugs, but perhaps that one served as a cautionary tale because I dithered a bit less than I usually do today.  Even a waterbug has its place, and they're welcome to settle in my imaginary basement.  Mi casa es su casa.

Arachnophobia

That title, while relevant, is somewhat less than accurate, because I'm not particularly afraid of spiders (though I'm certainly not fond of them, either.)

So, this morning, I found what I'm pretty sure was a brown recluse spider in my kitchen sink.  I know that the brown recluse has the distinctive violin marking on its back, but I didn't have my glasses or contact lenses, having just awoken a few minutes earlier, and I certainly wasn't going to get close enough to it to examine and identify any pattern that might or might not have appeared on its back.

It looked up at me, calmly and expectantly.  It seemed to be waiting for me to offer it a cup of coffee, or maybe some orange juice and toast.  As I said, I'm not particularly afraid of spiders, and perhaps this one, accustomed to human encounters accompanied by shrieks of terror, mistakenly thought that my silence indicated welcome.

The thing was already in the sink, not far from the drain.  Problem solved, I thought.  Instead of the hoped-for coffee and Continental breakfast, the spider got the business end of the faucet hose.  Then, after a few minutes of the deluge, I turned on the garbage disposal, just for good measure.  I thought for a moment that I'd probably be remembered among the brown recluse community as a monster, a fiend so cruel and wanton that mere drowning of an innocent spider wasn't enough to satisfy me; I had to torture the poor dying thing, too.

Imagine my surprise, then, when 20 minutes or so later, I found a spider in my sink again.  Notice that I didn't say "another spider" because I'm not sure, in fact, if it WAS another spider, or the same one, tougher and more resilient than I could ever have imagined.  What doesn't kill a spider might make it stronger, I thought, so this time, I squashed it.  THEN I ran the water and turned on the disposal again.  I tried not to think too hard about either of two distinct possibilities:

1.  A new breed of bulletproof, kill-resistant, super spider that can withstand all extermination attempts
2. Spider infestation

No sightings since.  Maybe word of this morning's incident has spread, and the spider community is wisely avoiding my house of death.  Or maybe they're plotting revenge.  I'll find out soon enough

PS--I thought to accompany this post with a photo of a brown recluse, maybe with a funny caption ("Actually, do you have soy milk?  I'm lactose intolerant.") but if you've never done a Google image search for brown recluse spiders, then do yourself a favor and don't.  It's not the spiders, because if you've seen one, you've seen them all.  Necrotizing spider bites, however, are all different and each is more gut-wrenchingly disgusting than the last.  You can't unsee some things.  Don't say you weren't warned.