You Give Me the Creeps

Living in the South is ruining me. I used to love being outdoors, love gardening, love camping. In the South, maybe not so much. It's the creepy-crawly things here that are getting to me; the ones with six legs or more. Just can't stand them.
I am not humane when I find one. I'll kill a spider so fast you can't even blink first. Well, that is if my husband is not around to enlist in the job for me. And I also have a squish limit. If the bug/spider is so big that it's going to feel squishy when smashed, then I have a REALLY hard time being the assassin.
Growing up in Utah in a well-landscaped yard next to a river and a bunch of foresty trees and bushes, I'm not unaccustomed to spiders and bugs. Don't get me wrong, I have encountered some pretty big spiders in my parents' house. The very worst was the occasional black widow, which I either killed with a flathead shovel, or got my dad to do it. Other bugs were there but nothing more than squishable annoyances.
But the spiders and insects in the South are an entirely new experience. Even after living here for 4 years, I still am not used to it. Our first apartment in Atlanta was well treated with pest control at least monthly. I loved living there for that reason. We lived on the 2nd floor, and so didn't have many pests. We did get a lot of ants when the ground water drove them up through the drains. The worst I encountered there were centipedes, or whatever those million-legged things are that move so fast they must be related to the roach family. Gosh, I hate those things, and we did have a lot of them.
By the time we moved to the Atlanta burbs, I was used to the centipedes. But moving to a house with a backyard next to a ravine, my true Southern bug experience had only begun. Enter spiders. Our yard in Smyrna had spiders with bodies as big as my thumb from mid-knuckle to tip. Those things were HUGE. Along with huge spiders come huge webs. We had a few webs 3-4 FEET in diameter in our front yard once. They were so big, I think they put "Charlotte's Web" to shame. The front of our house was covered with cobwebs in the fall and spring. I couldn't keep them cleared. After first seeing those big spiders, it was really hard for me to be outside in our yard without being totally freaked out.
That house in Smyrna also brought my first encounter with cockroaches. Even in the dumps I lived in in Boston, I never had roaches. Maybe it's too cold there. Roaches in Utah are something that only really old or really dirty houses have, as far as my experience goes. But in the South, even the cleanest of houses can have roaches. I HATE a cockroach more than I hate a spider. At least you can usually catch/kill spiders. Roaches are indestructable and run so fast that you're not likely to be able to attempt a kill, nor do they respond to household pesticides. That house in Smyrna was riddled with roaches. We had a few 1-1/2 to 2 inches long. Big suckers. I was so glad to move.
Our town house in Charlotte was much better. For awhile. One night in October when Nate was about to go to bed, he saw something scurrying across the floor. He thought it was a mouse. But NOOOOOOO...
I can hardly look at that picture. He woke me up to show me the spider he'd caught. He admits that he was a little freaked out too. That spider, as you can see, was the size of a quarter. And all those little brown spots near it are teeny tiny baby spiders that ran off the body of the big one when Nate put the glass over it. Nate vacuumed it up. I made him put the vacuum outside, and didn't use it for 2 weeks. I could hardly step foot in the room for days afterward, didn't play on the floor for weeks, and didn't drink out of that glass for nearly six months. That glass was dubbed "the spider glass" by me and my sister.
That house also introduced me fire ants. I don't know the real reason they're called that, but I say it's because they bite the fire out of you. I got caught in some a few weeks ago standing at the ATM. Didn't notice until it was too late. Hate those things.
Also discovered in Charlotte that there is a kind of hornet/bee that digs holes in the ground. Yup. Nate didn't believe me and my sister when we told him the backyard was swarming with bees that lived in the ground. He thought they were eating the ants. Turned out it wasn't ant hills after all, but bee holes all over the lawn. Thank goodness they only lasted about a month in the spring and then were gone.
That bring us to our current house. I should have known that living in the country with a backyard next to a forest would bring bugs with it. Yet again I have a hard time enjoying being outside. A few weeks ago I was watering the flowers in the front yard when Cooper came running, "Mommy! Bug! BIG Bug!!! and ran toward the garage. He was right. This is the bug he'd found.
I'd only ever seen beetles that size before in museums. Ugh. It had started again.
This house is FULL of spiders all day long. I'm so used to killing spiders that I'll even kill the tiny ones with my bare fingers. But nothing prepared me for the suprise invaders I found in my coat closet today. I was happily sweeping the floor in prep for mopping, and decided the walk-in closet in the kitchen/dining area needed to be included in the cleaning. Coop had just eaten raisins, and I'd swept up a few. But I wondered how raisins had gotten in the back of the closet. Then I thought, "Oh, it's dog food." Then...it moved... and moved so fast it could only be one thing....
My only recourse is going to be arming myself with rubber gloves and the vacuum. But where there is one, there are many.
I think it's time to move...
far, far away from the South and these bugs.
And I'm certainly never moving to Texas.
P.S. Thought this blog would help me feel better. It didn't.