January Spiders

     Today I was murderous and barbarous by choice and without apology.  I have found that sometimes I lack even the smallest amount of sympathy, and that is by choice.  I made that decision years ago. I am not certain whether it is by nature or nurture, but I hate spiders. I do not have even the smallest amount of tolerance or compassion toward them. If they are in my home or if they show up where I am, they are as good as dead.  One would not think that would even be an issue in January, but today it was.

     The fact that I was encountering spiders in the dead of winter was my own fault. It was because of my negligence.  I knew that whenever one stores a firewood pile from the winter through the summer it becomes a shelter to all sorts of critters. That was true for my woodpile too.  I just didn't regard that as an important detail this past May, June, July or August.  The wood was neatly stacked up against the fence under a tarp and I chose to ignore it.  That was good news for the spiders and bad news for me.

     As I have been been burning wood in my fireplace I have been restocking it with that wood from my backyard. As I get down to the bottom of the pile, I am finding the critters that used the wood as their home over the summer:  wood roaches and large brown recluse spiders.  The spiders have been curled up in the nooks and crannies sparsely covered with their webs. A vain attempt to overwinter.  Too bad for them.  Once I caught my breath after discovering them, they were promptly sprayed with insecticide or squished.  I am grateful they are not moving so they are easy targets.  My motto: a good spider is a dead spider.  That is ESPECIALLY true of a brown recluse.

     Recluses and black widows are common around here. But now recluses are a little less common!  I stopped restocking the wood so the freezing temperatures could penetrate deeply into the bottom of the stack.

     Yes, I have learned a lesson.