Garden Orb Web Weaver

I have an unhealthy fear of spiders. Big or small, spiders freak me out. They paralyze me. I suppose that would make me an arachnophobe. In any case, I don't like spiders and they scare the britches off of me.

Which is odd, because I'm an outdoor kind of gal. I love gardening, camping, trapsing through the woods, running through corn fields...but I stop cold when I see a spider. It's like I have some arachnoradar. I know exactly where spiders are.

Meet this beauty. She decided to take up residence on my front porch. She spun her web between my front porch railing and my hanging geranium basket. She was a lovely autumn shade of orange and she was bigger than a quarter. Instant nausea. When I first laid eyes on her, I thought I was going to pass out. I literally froze up and yelled for my husband in a panicky and hurried voice. He knows the spider voice. It mimics the enraged lunatic who has broken into our house and is inches away from chopping my head off voice.

I asked him to remove her which means, "kill the bitch", but DaHubs, who is a lover off all creatures great and small, usually finds a paper cup or a paper plate and collects the live specimen and removes it to the great outdoors. This time, however, I think the garden orb web weaver scared him because there was no way in hell he was going to touch her. It was time to call in a professional.

I begged Cody, my neighbor, to come over and take care of her. He came trotting over with his gallon of Death Spray and after several minutes of teasing me, he gave her a good spray. I know, I know, it's completely uncool to kill harmless critters. She wasn't doing anyone harm - except to me by way of nightmares and panic attacks. When confronted by a scary spider, I tend to have nightmares for about a week which involve me waking up in the middle of night and screaming that there are spiders all over the ceiling and walls. This drives my husband insane. He's been a good sport for putting up with this type of behavior for well, nearly 15 years now.

She didn't go down without a fight, either. This Death Spray is supposed to be instantaneous and once she was doused, she traveled quickly from her spot in the center of her orbtastic web right up into my hanging basket. Cody assured me she was going to die but I was convinced she would live forever in my plant. I started the nervous panic pace.

The nervous panic pace involves me becoming fixated on the situation. For instance, it'll appear that I'm relaxing on the couch watching TV, but really I'm obsessing over the idea that the spider is still alive and in my geranium. My eyes are on the TV but all I'm seeing is the spider. It's fear at it's purist form. So after Cody sprayed the spider, I spent the next hour hovering at the window looking for her to reappear. It's almost obnoxious, really, this fixation that overcomes me. After some time, she did, in fact, reappear. She started this long dangling decent to her death. Of course I mistakened this act as her seeking revenge on me and all things I love. I watched her in sheer fear as she slowly decended from my hanging basket from her lonely web strand.

I picked up the phone and called Cody. "Cody, you have to come over here and finish the job. I'm not kidding, get over here now, she's still alive, please hurry, OH MY GOD, she's still alive! Oh, oh, hurry, hurry, before she lands on the porch!" Ok, see? That's the panicky voice. Within minutes, he was there and I was waiting at the front door with a broom. I handed it to him and in a stearn voice instructed him to "get rid of her."

Once again, this allowed for more ridicule on my part. I didn't care. By this time I had worked myself up into such a tizzy that all the ribbing and jokes were ineffective. The focus, for me, was the expedient removal of said spider. After poking at her and observing her lifeless carcass, it was decided she was dead. Cody intercepted her web strand with the broom handle and removed her body to the street. Dead spider walking.

I'm still not over this ordeal. I have two hanging baskets on my front porch who have passed on to the giant hanging basket in the sky, but I'm terrified to remove them to the garbage because...what if she had babies in there? Oh the horrors of which I wish not to think! You should have seen me earlier as I scoured the web for a picture of this spider. See, I had no idea what kind of spider she was, so I googled orange spider and after inspecting several photos, I found the exact arachnid. By the time I found the correct photo, I was twitchy and jumpy and had inspected every corner of my office for anything that had more than two legs.

It's a sickness, people, it's a sickness.