The war is growing, and I'm losing

A very common saying is "the friend of my enemy is my friend." No, wait, that's not right. The real saying is "Any enemy of mine is a friend of my enemies." Hang on, that's not..  Maybe "My enemies friends are a friend indeed?" At any rate, basically there is a saying that when two people fight , if a third one joins in he will be someones friend. Any general worth his salt knows that if he can force his enemy to fight a war on two fronts, it will make his job much easier, what with having to deal with fewer of his opponents at any given time, draining resources, etc. With that being said, a war has been declared in my house that I could just as soon do without. Who is this new enemy, I hear you ask, fighting valiantly with me against my arachnid oppressors? Earwigs. Stupid. Freaking. Earwigs.

Here's the thing. Earwigs haven't been an issue for me since I was about six years old and was told that they never use their stupid butt-pinchers on people. After that, they were quickly relegated to a background role where they were basically 100% irrelevant in my life. A pest that occasionally needed to be disposed of, but no more.

However, starting sometime at the beginning of this year, I started noticing them more frequently. There would be one, kicking it on the kitchen counter. Sometime later, yet another one, moseying along the floorboards in the bathroom. Once in a while, a particularly uppity one would decide that hygiene was lacking in his life, and decide to jump in the tub. Basically, after a while it went from being "Oh, there's one of those creatures that's 100% irrelevant to my life" to being " Really? Another one?" and then recently to "If I see another #$%$ing earwig I will *&#@ing declare jihad!"

The problem is, earwigs are, when reduced to the essentials, basically cockroaches. Cockroaches with freaky pinchers on their butts, that they use for who knows what kind of freaky stuff, (since apparently they don't pinch people.) Now, I have had to deal with cockroaches in my life, some of them mind-bogglingly, disgustingly huge. (See: I lived in Brazil.) However, cockroaches, despite being foul and disease spreading vermin of the worst kind, are basically cowards. You turn on the light, and they scuttle away. You come closer, and they scuttle faster. It's basically their entire modus operandi: be disgusting, and then run away and be disgusting somewhere else when the lights come on.

Earwigs, on the other hand, do not scuttle away as soon as they spot you. Based on my recent experiences, I would say they're more like that one irritating acquaintance (everyone has at least one) that never knows when they've outstayed their welcome. They hang out, sharing your bathtub and making disparaging comments about how you're starting to get a little chubby, and have you heard about this one diet, and have you thought about maybe starting to work out once in a while, until you're forced to hit them with a shampoo bottle. (Maybe your acquaintances don't do this. If so, count your blessings.)

On at least three instances in the past two weeks, I have picked up my book, only to see an earwig hanging out on the binding. "Hey," it seems to say. "Whatcha reading? Oh, this one? I read that, I hated how the protagonist died at the end and the love interest married the villain. Anyways, don't you think maybe you should be reading a diet book or something?" Of course, I am then forced to batter it with every move in my (considerable) vermin bashing arsenal. But they still don't get the hint!

So, hopefully by now you're beginning to see my dilemma. Spiders, especially spiders that you come upon unexpectedly on your blankets right before turning off the light to go to bed, are terrifying looking little bastards. Especially the wolf spiders I deal with on a consistent basis in my home. With their freaky fangs and ability to blend directly into the carpet, they are seldom welcomed with open arms in my home (unless said arms happen to be holding a cinder block.) However, they do eat earwigs. And for that, I would happily allow them to keep living in my home. In fact, I'm beginning to think it's my fault that the earwigs are running rampant now, since I spent most of the last year killing off their main predator with a shoe. 

The worst part is, what with the wolf spiders thinning out the earwig herds, the spiders just get bigger and faster, while only the strongest, most cunning earwigs survive. In either case, I'm forced between a freakishly fanged, eight-legged rock, and pincher-butted disease-carrying hard place. If the earwigs win, I'm stuck opening the bathroom door face to snarky face, hearing comments about my weight from the tub, and if the spiders win I end up with a spider hanging out on my pillow right before lights out, asking if I'm comfortable and do I mind if he's the little spoon tonight? With those choices, fleeing the country is beginning to seem like the best option.

Undead Spiders: Bad Thing, or the Worst Thing?

Last week, I left you all with a crazy cliffhanger, in which me and three compatriots mounted an expedition into the hot tropical night to view the remains of the infamous "Spiderzilla."(If you haven't read it yet, maybe you should go back and do that now, so that you have context for todays post. It's cool, I'll wait. Back already? Cool, let's do this.) As expeditions go, I would rank it somewhat below "D-Day." If I'm being perfectly honest, it probably only ranked slightly above "Getting up in the middle of the night to use the restroom." Be that is may, we were well equipped with one tiny flashlight and the flip-flops on our feet. Ah, how young we were, how full of the heady optimism of youth! Little did we know the horror that awaited us under that beautiful equatorial moon!

The expedition went smoothly at first, walking to the neighbors sidewalk where the mangled remains... um... remained. Conversation renewed, commentary was made regarding the beasts magnitude, thoughts were put forth on the forthrightness of the neighbor ladies involved. All in all, a most agreeable nights entertainment before heading back to our well deserved rest. We began the retreat to our domicile, and in fact had renewed the conversation when we realized one of our number was no longer present!

This Brazilian, emboldened by our earlier success had remained outdoors, to poke around and see what else was around outside. Well. I could have told him what a bad idea that was. Who knows what Lovecraftian horrors were lurking out there in the darkness? What eldritch horrors, that would rip out a mans sanity from just a single gaze upon their twisted visages? And twisted, eldritch horrors were exactly what he found, in the form of Spiderzilla's mate, lying in wait on our doorstep with fangs at the ready.

We were alerted to this fact by the... less than manly screams of our companion. Now, to be fair, this Tarantula was at least as large, if not larger than its compatriot. Its black eyes were probably sparkling balefully as it gazed on our quaking forms. I mean, it was pretty dark, and we didn't have a porch light, so I couldn't really tell, but... most likely baleful. Entirely full of bales, if I had to guess.

Having become alerted to this demon-in-spider form, we sprang immediately into action by jumping up and down, yelling at each other, and telling each other what to do in no uncertain terms. I was hindered by the fact that I barely spoke any portuguese, and settled for circling the outside of the commotion, yelling incomprehensibly, and hoping I didn't catch the spiders eye(s).

It took us much longer than the forceful ladies next door, but eventually, we settled on a course of action. Those ladies, of course, went with the direct and aggressive Sandal-to-the-Head-Fu. We were somewhat hampered in the sandal offense by all of us being entirely unwilling to get close enough to the spider to hit it with a sandal. So we settled on using our apartments dilapidated broom, which we then took turns using to beat the holy Moses out of Bride of Spiderzilla.

We were probably scared of something like this happening.

Now, that seemed to have solved the problem. Bride of Spiderzilla was little more than a twisted mass of hair and evil, and I decided to retire to the shower (a twice-daily necessity in those tropical climes.) However, once I got done, I was immediately regaled with tales of the undead! Bride of Spiderzilla had returned from the dead and attempted vengeance, and my roommates had been forced to go head-to-head with a tarantula using nothing but our trusty boom once more.

Now, in horror movies, you can see what will happen next, and you can hear the music building. The hero ignores all good sense and returns to the monsters lair, passing through creaking doorways, past racks of torture equipment and KFC buckets full of human eyeballs. And of course you scream at the screen: "No! Why would you go in there! That doesn't even make sense!" Well, let me tell you a life lesson. Curiosity is what leads to more ill-advised decisions than maybe anything else in the world. You think "I wonder what is in the basement of this poorly-maintained shack in the middle of the woods?" And the next thing you know you are running for your life through the woods from a man with terrible personal hygiene and a hook for a hand.

Point being, it was curiosity that led me outside again to see the mangled remains of the Bride of Spiderzilla. And just like the mangled monster in a horror movie, Bride of Spiderzilla crawled back to life one more time, just to make sure I would never trust anything ever again.

And that, my friends, is the story of how I lit fire to the porch of a Brazilian apartment in the middle of the night.

Flashbacks to the pest

You know, I wasn't always this way when it comes to spiders. Once, I was interested in their biology. Once, I was interested in the role they play in the environment. I don't know when that changed... Maybe... Maybe that all changed once I had my first run in with a tarantula in the wild…

(Cue Wayne's World cut scene fingers. Doodly-doo, doodly-doo, doodly-doo…)

Long ago, I spent several years in Brazil, because that is the sort of manly and intrepid person that I am. Now, the thing about Brazil is that Americans only know two things about it: They love Soccer there! And, isn't it like, the jungle or something? And, indeed, a great deal of Brazil is covered by the Amazonian rain forest. What Americans don't realize is that a country as big as Brazil actually has a variety of ecosystems, one of which (much to my surprise, once I arrived there) is desert. Cool. (Or should I say Hot, HAHAHA! Never mind. Ahem. Anyways...) So, I had arrived in the desert of Brazil, and had only been there about two weeks when the following events occurred.

Allow me to set the scene. At the time I was living in a series of four-plexes, and our apartment was at the very end, on the bottom floor. I was living there with three other guys, two Brazilians and one other American. Due to the circumstances of my time there, I was were required to go everywhere with a buddy. So one fine, warm day, I was returning home around lunch time with my buddy. (All days in Brazil are fine and warm. In fact, the weather being what it is, most people wear flip-flops almost every day, and almost everywhere. An inconsequential point, one might think, but one that enters the story later with a vengeance.) Anyways, on this particular fine, warm day, as we were passing by the neighbors house, we heard a piercing shriek, so naturally, being the caring, supportive neighbors we were, we stopped and craned our necks for all we were worth to see what was causing the ruckus.

Now, time may have clouded my memory of this event, but this, roughly, is what happened next. The door bursts open, followed very closely by two neighbors, a middle aged lady and her daughter, launching out what, at first glance, would appear to a large mouse or a small cat. (Or possibly a regular size cockroach. They grow things large in Brazil.) Of course it turn out to be none of these things. It is… (Dun Dun DUUUUUUNNN) a very large Tarantula. (Wait, you weren't surprised by that buildup? Oh yeah, I guess you are reading a blog about my experiences with spiders. Maybe I should quit wasting so much time on exposition.)

Now, I had previously supposed, being a naive young man, that living around such things would harden the populace, and make them blasé to the encroaches of the native fauna. However, in actuality, it turns out that there are some things that People, in general, just do not like. There may be exceptions, of course. I personally know some people who appear to be the Crocodile Hunter of Spiders (if you will) picking them up, playing with them, and giving them adorable nicknames (Furry-Butt, Googly-Eyes, Harvester of Damned Souls, etc.)

The point of all this, is that the two ladies dealing with the spider appeared to be not in the least hardened to having tarantulas in their midst. They put their hands on the first weapons they could find, and attacked that spider as though it had threatened to hit a baby with a hammer. Of course, it being Brazil, the first things they could lay their hands on were their sandals. And if you do not think that an ordinary flip-flop provides an effective weapon, clearly you have not spent much time around women of latin descent. Indeed, rarely, if ever, have I seen two pairs of flip-flops dual wielded with such stunning ferocity. It brought to mind some lesser known Jackie Chan film, if the antagonist in such a film had been a spider the size of your hand. (Unless you have small hands. The point being, it was not a small creature.)

Now, it has taken me quite a while to tell all of this, because I tend to be long-winded, but it happened in the space of a few seconds, so me and my friend were left there in stunned amazement, looking at what looked like what would happen if there was an explosion in a internal-organs-and-hair factory. Naturally, it was an event that stuck in our minds, so that night we shared the story with the other guys in our apartment, spending as much time as possible focusing on "how BIG that thing was! It was like, check out this plate, ok? Kind of like that!" This naturally led to curiosity on the part of our companions, so flashlights were retrieved, and an expedition was mounted to view the remains of Spiderzilla. This of course, led to the events of next weeks installment, which I like to call "Revenge of Spiderzilla: the Bride of Spiderzilla!"

(To Be Continued...)

(How was that buildup? Was that better? I'm still getting used to this "having space to write whatever I feel like" thing.)

(P.S. I also added a follow by email thing, so if you feel like it you will get an email anytime you want to hear about spiders, and I also happen to have written something about them here.)

Making an offer they can't refuse

Well everyone, I knew I would be telling you stories about the crazy shenanigans spiders always try and pull at my house, but I had no idea it would be so soon. Apparently the last spider was simply a scout, sent as a ruse. Tonight I came home, only to find the spider equivalent of Luca Brazzi hanging out on my doorframe, staring at me with its multitude of beady eyes and making comments about how "flammable my stuff looks" and how "it would be a shame if anything were to happen to it."

Well, I don't know how many of you have seen the movie "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," but what happened next was pretty much nothing like that. However, I did high kick Luca the Spider right in his stupid eight-eyed face. I like to think that the last thing that passed through his mind was my shoe. But only moments before that, he was probably registering surprise at how good a man of my... heft, is at at high-kicking things.

In conclusion, as a final reminder to any spiders who may be reading this, the brown smear on my door signifies that Luca "The Spider" Brazzi sleeps with the fishes. And I'm taking this thing to the mattresses.

The calm at the eye of the storm

For those of you who love stories of man vs. monster, daring escapes and cunning foes, bravery, sacrifice, and desperate courage, you will be delighted to know that I saw the years first spider in my house just now.

Photographic Proof

Here it comes you guys. Once again, I have been attacked by an abhorrent eight-legged aberration of nature in the privacy of my own home, in the comfort of my own couch! This is spiderpocalypse that I have dreaded since the day that I ran that spider down the disposal (To be fair, that still makes me laugh.) They are gathering, and in the coming storm, no one shall be safe. To prove the horrors that I have undergone, I include a photo of the hell-beast in question. (What do you mean, you can't see it! It's the brown spot next to my hand! No, not that one. The other one, right above... right... Yeah, that one! Above my hand. No? maybe you should get a magnifying glass.)

 Anyways, let this serve as proof that I have never once exaggerated the horrors I go through on a practically hourly basis in this spider-pit I call home.

Now, the moment you've all been waiting for! The next installment of Evan Versus Like, A Million Spiders. (Spoilers: the spider dies at the end.) So a couple of days ago, I was making myself a nice, home-cooked meal, because that is the kind of capable and versatile Man that I am (Ladies.) As I went to put dishes in the sink, I became aware that there was a large (my perceptions may have been warped by the heat of the moment, but it appeared to be the size of a small kitten) wolf spider in the sink. 

Now, many people would find themselves put out by such an occurrence, but not yours truly. With a calm and determined air, I did what any other rational individual (and I am thinking specifically of Abraham Lincoln here) would have done: turned on the disposal and used the sprayer to wash it down.

A simple, painless victory, you would think. But now I am plagued by doubts. Much like the protagonist of "The Tell-Tale Heart," I'm beginning to think my actions were ill-advised. I haven't seen any spiders since then, but given how common they were before, I believe they may have witnessed the demise of their comrade and are now biding their time and plotting a counter-attack. Should I die suddenly, make sure the coroner checks for the fang-marks of a thousand revenge bound arachnids.

Another one...

Another wolf spider crawled on the wall just before I went to bed. *yawn*

The first skirmish

Hurray, it's story time with Evan again! So as I am sitting here on my couch, another freaking wolf spider (for simplicities sake we will call him Ralph) comes crawling along over the back rest, you know, minding his own business. Of course, being a man, I do not jump up and scream, because that would bring shame to my dojo.

Anyways, after not jumping up and not screaming, I notice that Ralph has disappeared back into the depths from whence he came. Now let's be real, with a beard like the one that constantly graces my chiseled jaw, it is basically impossible for me to feel fear, or even mild paranoia. So when a light breeze caresses my arm, I do not jump and flail around, thinking that Ralph has returned. Nor do I curse and hit my own arm when I get a mild itch that anybody would have mistaken for the bite of a Ninja Spider returning for vengeance after having been startled by sudden high-pitched noises in it's vicinity. No, I just lay here, as cool and collected as any man has ever been. You should all be proud.

(P.S. I am going to need backup ASAP, preferably with a flamethrower.)

The Beginning...

I am usually a pretty live-and-let-live kind of guy RE: spiders, however, if I have another wolf spider that closely resembles Shelob crawl onto my bed one more time right before I'm about to go to bed I may declare jihad.