It started off with my noticing "something" black on the wall up near the ceiling. Got the ladder to have a closer look and discovered it was a spider with its legs tucked in and that meant it was about the size of a 50 cent piece. Eek!
Now I don't mind sharing my house with the odd spider - as long as it's not poisonous I hasten to add - because they help deal with any stray insects that get inside since we don't like using insecticides unless it's absolutely unavoidable. But there are limits and this was one of those times. I had to act.
What to do? My usual go to is to take an envelope, manoeuvre whatever beastie I'm trying to remove into it, hold the envelope tightly closed and take it outside. This works for all sorts of little critters - spiders, little skinks and geckos for example - as long as I'm fairly sure I'll be able to contain them because I really don't fancy having any of them run up my arm. But this spider obviously a) wouldn't fit in an envelope and b) probably wouldn't cooperate in going into one even if I tried to make it go in. I was going to need help.
So I called Pisces to be ready to open the door, armed myself with a dust pan and brush and headed back up the ladder. Turns out the spider wasn't all that keen on being held down by a brush - can't understand why. Anyway it crawled around and hid on the back of the pan where it stayed while I took it outside and found it a nice place to live.
Then a little while later I went out to get the mail and over the road there were four police officers wandering around the front yard opposite, three in uniform and the other apparently a detective as I heard them say something about 'he must have got in here because footprints'. No idea what it was all about but I'm certainly making sure every security measure we have is in place.
And the final thing - my cat, who has never done this before, nipped me and I have absolutely no idea why. The good thing is he only left a small scratch and apparently I'm forgiven for whatever he thinks I did because he's back in his usual place on the end of my bed. And, no, he's not forgiven by me yet.
3 comments:
Of course I don't know how big a 50 cent piece is in Oz, but big spiders aren't fun to have around. Do you know your neighbours well enough to ask them? Maybe puss was just in a bad mood.
A fifty cent piece is about 3 centimetres across, Jo, and with this spider most of that diameter was its tucked in legs - its body was much smaller - but even so I didn't fancy having it wandering around in the house.
These neighbours don't speak to anyone in the street - their loss because this is a very friendly street - so I guess it will have to stay a mystery.
Puss might have been feeling the heat I suppose. We hit 37 C yesterday and today is going to be hotter.
I'd be biting people in that sort of heat
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