Common large house spider

A couple people have asked about the spider story so as much as I hate to think about it, I'll post it.

I will not be posting a photo, not even a stock photo of the world's tiniest, most harmless spider, even that would be too much for me.

Here's the email I sent my sister about it, right after it happened:

I was quite close to home when suddenly there was this huge spider crawling up the doorframe, creeping closer and closer to my head! It was one of those wolf* spiders, ya know? Not normal to find that in a car, I don't think! It wasn't one of the huge ones, it was about 2 inches in length, but it was big enough I could see the joints in its legs as it came closer to my face. I had to get out of that car fast, so I swung into a side street, up onto the sidewalk, slapped the "power" button on the car to park it, and jumped out. I was in a total panic, obviously, cuz by then the creepy thing was almost at my face.


And then I watched as my car started ROLLING AWAY!!!!!!!!!!! In all my years of driving this has never happened to me, but I'd always feared it for some reason. I jumped back in -cringing- and tried to turn the car off again and slammed the emergency brake on. Thankfully I wasn't on a big hill or I'd have been running after my car.


How did that happen? The Prius won't go into park when the digital speedometer reads more than 0. And I'd stopped so fast and hit it before it registered 0, so the car wouldn't power off. It's lazy to just hit power to park the car, but my man got me into that habit after I realized you don't have to hit park, then power, you can just hit power. And with big old spider at my forehead, I just hit power.


So there's this old man standing there and I ran to him and grabbed his arm and whimpered "HELP ME!" and my hand was totally shaking as I tried to get a napkin out of the glovebox for him to kill my spider.


But then we couldn't find it. HORROR! He helped me search the whole car and no luck. I thanked him and eventually had to get back in - what was very very hard, except my house was just down the hill. I couldn't even bring myself to use my seatbelt, that's how scared I was. The car has this escalating beep system that gets louder and more annoying the longer you drive w/o a seat belt. I shouted to it, "You're pissing off the spider!!!!!!!!!!!!"


As soon as I got home I asked my man for help and he started tearing out the floor mats but we couldn't find it.


Probably it crawled into the potato sack or carrot bag and I'll find it in my kitchen soon.

But I am not driving that car for a very long time, thankfully, I don't have to. I know how long spiders can survive without eating. Weeks. (Ask me how I know this.)


Thank God I wasn't on the autobahn, I don't know if I could have kept it together if there was no shoulder. This was not the kind of spider you just swat away, you know?


All day long I've been jumpy from this. Hopefully I'll be able to sleep. I really could use spider therapy!: )


***
*These are what we kids used to call wolf spiders, but they are not. They are bigger. Google "Common large house spider", click "Images" and you will see the ones I mean. These are what we had in the basement living in Seattle and they're so big you think a mouse is crossing your floor if you see it out of the corner of your eye. They apparently live in Germany too--I broke my man's bookshelf recently tearing it apart when one hid behind it. (Bookshelf is fixed now, and spider is dead.)

Try not to have a heart attack while viewing the photos. In fact, don't view them at all if you are like me. I feel sick now.

(This blog entry is dedicated to my sister - born on Hallowe'en and even more scared of bugs than I am. Sucks to be us.)