Arrgh, Spiders!

• 22nd June 2006 at 11:39

Today is Put Out The Rubbish Day in Truro, or at least it is in my road. Come to think about it though, Thursday has been rubbish day in all 5 homes I've had in 3 counties - co-incidence or conspiracy? Maybe Thursday is National Put Out The Rubbish Day - but in that case, what do the bin men do the rest of the week? So many questions, so little time. But I digress.

Our outside rubbish bin is kept round the corner next to some hedges, so every Thursday I carry it out to the road. Being quite sheltered, I often find that a small creature has made the bin corner its home - I've found things like snails, slugs, earwigs. Thankfully though, I've never found a rat, and, despite the year-round presence of thick layers of spiders' webs in all of the hedges, I have never found a spider. This all changed today.

Before I go any further, I should say that I have a pathological fear of spiders. I know most of them in this country can't kill me, but they can crawl on me. Furthermore, I am a firm believer that our ancestors only survived because this fear has been hard-wired into our genes, into our primitive psyche. In my eyes, anyone who can look at spiders without feeling is a genetic step backwards, and their offspring will be the first to die when the spiders rise up against their human oppressors. Either that or they'll make a fortune selling their extermination skills to the rest of us.

So today, as I approached the bin, I saw that a spider had been busy attempting to attach the bin to the wall. Figured I'd lift the lid and scrape away the cobwebs, just to make sure the spider wasn't still around.

I lifted the lid of the bin, and to my horror the inside was crawling with tens of thousands of baby spiders. Ok, tens of thousands might be a slight exaggeration, but there were at least 37. That's how high I counted while I was killing them.

The bin is now sitting outside waiting for the bin men to come. Even though I know I didn't bring any back in with me - I was very careful, and put myself through a rigorous decontamination process upon re-entering the house - I am still seeing them everywhere. The little marks on the walls, the shadows in the carpets - did that just move? Even worse, I can feel them on my legs. I know it's just itching from where I got them sunburnt the other day, but there's always that split second of fear...

Thing is, if this was an isolated incident it wouldn't be so bad, but it's not. This place is Spider City. They're all over the hedges and the plants, and they've set up home right outside our front door. No matter how many times I scrape away the cobwebs, they're right back there when I open the front door in the mornings.

At least we've only got three more weeks in this flat, then we're moving up to Cheltenham. But for more about those adventures, I'm afraid you'll have to wait until next time.

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