Last night as I made my usual bathroom pit stop before going to bed I had a strange encounter with a spider. When I turned on the bathroom lights, there was a largish black spider on the bathroom wall right beside the toilet. I hate most insects and spiders are definitely not my favorite creature.
I stood there staring at it a bit as I had just spared a spider from certain death last week when I found a large spider occupying space on the seat of my lawn chair outside. Granted I did fold the chair back up and tossed it about ten feet away from me, but I didn’t smash him.That felt different though as he was at least outside. This was inside my house, fair game in my book.
I grabbed some toilet paper off of the roll and making a little bunch out of it I reached out to squish the spider. I hate squishing things, but sometimes its about self preservation. He must have seen my intent and was too fast for me. He dropped to the floor and ran into the corner beside the toilet. I tried to get it with the plunger that sat nearby but he escaped behind the toilet where its hard to reach.
I went and opened the bathroom cabinet doors hoping I guess that I actually had an insect spray in there. I got my body spray out, desperate times and all that. I started spraying body spray behind the toilet attacking from both sides. My bladder was letting me know we had to finish what we came in here for, so I quickly sat down and kept turning sideways, my eyes darting left and right to try to find where the spider had gone.
When I got up, I saw it trying to hide behind the very plunger I had tried to kill it with. Bad idea buddy, I thought. I grabbed the air freshener spray that sat on the back of the toilet and let him have a blast of that. That had to do it, right?
I went back into the living room to finish watching my show before heading off to bed, all the while both wondering if the spider was working his way out here to bite me, and almost gagging on the sickly sweet smell of the mixture of my body spray and the air freshener spray that was wafting out into the living room.
A few minutes later my show ended, and I went to bed. Well I went in and laid on my bed still wondering if the spider had survived my attack. Hours later I finally drifted off into an uneasy sleep.
Three o’clock a.m. rolled around and as usual I woke up. Normally I head right into the bathroom to empty my bladder so maybe I can fall back asleep. Not tonight. Tonight I was worried that I hadn’t killed the spider and he would either be laying there suffering, forcing me to smash it, which now just felt inhumane to me, or he would be gone, and I wouldn’t know where he’d snuck off to.
I tossed and turned for about an hour and my bladder won out. Side note; why do we always try to put off getting up to use the bathroom? The bladder always wins out. I crept into the bathroom and flicked on the light switch. I peeked beside the toilet to see what had happened to the spider. To my relief and dismay, no spider was in sight anywhere.
I sat down and lifted up my feet so they weren’t touching the floor, short people can do things like that. I was worried that the spider, who may now be temporarily blinded by the sprays and is certainly ticked off, might run out and bite me as I sat there helplessly. I hurried as fast as my sixty-five year old bladder would let me and quickly got back into bed.
Laying there wide awake once again, I ran all the possibilities through my head about where and when the spider would have his revenge on me. After a long while I once again drifted into an uneasy sleep.
In the morning, two hours later, I woke thinking about the spider first thing. When I went into the bathroom I began lifting everything around the toilet area, the grandkids step stool, the plunger, the little stool that holds the bucket with the spare toilet paper, the two rugs. That was everything, and no spider body, alive or otherwise. I looked up to make sure he wasn’t above me waiting to jump on me and bite me.
I’m not sure how this is going to play out, maybe he went down the heat register and is living out his spider life in the basement somewhere, telling others down there about his horrible adventures with a crazy lady upstairs who sprayed sweet smelling stuff on him, or maybe he’s lying in wait somewhere up here plotting his revenge. I do know that for a while, the bathroom is going to be a scary place with an unknown spider danger possibly awaiting. I guess we’ll never know…
Update: I don’t think this is the spider in question because I swear it was a lot bigger than this one, but there is a similar though smaller spider now living in my spare toilet paper can!
Every time I use the bathroom he turns and stares at me from on top of the toilet paper roll. Is he a child of said spider waiting to exact his revenge? One of these days I am going to have to take that whole can outside and dump it out and he can make his way in the world outside. Did I mention I hate spiders?
Until next time…
Stay safe, wear your mask, social distance.
Toni