Aragog junior

We have had a spider living essentially on our back door for the better part of the summer. The web stretched across the topmost corner of the door and didn't really get in the way of anyone trying to go in or out. And since spiders are known to eat other, peskier bugs, The Husband and I were more than willing to allow this spider tenancy on our back door.

Now, the back door is not one I use very often, but The Husband uses it once a week when he takes out the trash. For the past several weeks, he has been returning from the trash duty with reports that the spider was getting larger and the web more intrusive.

"Pish tosh!" I always retorted, because The Husband is well known to have a thing about spiders. "How big can it be?"

I found out yesterday when I had to bring our trash down to the garbage bins outside and was very nearly killed by the biggest spider I have ever seen. Its web stretched across the top third of the doorway, and when I opened the door, I apparently caused the web to shake and the spider scuttled down extremely close to my head to find out what tasty treat it had snared. Naturally, I screamed and slammed the door shut, because I am well known to keep a cool head in these sorts of circumstances.

I could not bring myself to pass under that web, so I found an old stick (the back entryway is where we store our leftover wood from our never ending home improvement projects) and attempted to swat the spider off. Unfortunately, I was only able to manage to knock of bits of the web in between ducking behind the door to protect myself from the giant spider who was rebuilding the web even as I destroyed it. I could actually see the silk coming out of the spider's butt. I ended up taking an old stick and going out through the front door and around to the back so that I could knock the spider off from a safe distance, because I could not bring myself to walk under that web. What if the spider had landed on my head? WHAT THEN?

This post is brought to you by Emily who inspired me to write about my own spider incident. Sadly, I do not have a picture of my spider, but it was almost as big as Emily's and a sort of speckled tan. Emily definitely wins, however, since her spider was black and hairy and IN HER KITCHEN.