One thing that I won't miss when I finally sell this house is the spiders. I have never seen so many spiders before in my life. They're in my house. They're in my yard. They were in the building where I used to work. I wouldn't be surprised if they're even in my car. Seriously, I think this town is a mecca for all spiders in the Northern Hemisphere. They should change the town's nickname from "The City of Geraniums" to "The City of Eight-Legged Mini-Monsters."I'm innately paranoid about brown spiders. Ever since I saw some talk show a few years ago that showed what a brown recluse spider bite looks like--basically, it looks like a giant, epidermal crater--I'm convinced that every brown spider that I see is a brown recluse. I don't even try to look for the violin shape on the spiders' backs anymore. I just grab the nearest object and squash the brown spiders into oblivion.
I wish someone had told me when I first moved here that I could have bought brown recluse spider traps instead of rolling up old magazines. For instance, a company called Catchmaster makes nontoxic, spider glue traps that catch a variety of spiders, from brown recluse and hobo spiders to parson and sac spiders. The traps work by placing food-grade bait on the glue-lined interior. The spiders, attracted to the food, enter the trap and get stuck to the glue. Because the baits use glue instead of pesticides, they're safe to use around both pets and children. Due to their small size, they can also be used in a variety of places, including next to baseboards and in cabinets, and adapted from a square-shaped trap to a triangle-shaped trap if needed. Catchmaster's spider glue traps are affordable as well. You can get a 60-count pack of traps for $29.97, which includes priority shipping, from CleanerToday.com.
Seeing as my dogs like to chew on anything that's made from paper--paper towels, toilet paper, cardboard soap boxes, probably even paper-lined sheetrock if they could figure out how to get it off the wall--I may have to pass on the spider traps for the time being. I could just see them trying to eat one, the trap getting stuck to the roof of their mouth, and the three of us spending all day at the vet's office while some vet technician tries to remove the trap without removing all the tissue in their mouth. If I'm unable to sell this house by the time my Glamour subscription, and hence my current spider killer, runs out, I may have no choice but to buy some.
