Creepy Crawly

A couple mornings ago, I walked into the kitchen after taking the kids to school and Jason said, "Hey babe, I have a surprise for you." That man 'o mine! He's brought me flowers a few times lately, so I thought maybe he'd done it again. I smiled. "What is it?" "Look over there," he pointed to the kitchen counter. Where I saw this.

(Dramatic Pause.)

Isn't that just precious? Now before you totally wig out, let me show you another picture to give it some scale.
This, my pretties, is the Black House Spider. The fact sheet I looked up online says that it's "poisonous but not lethal". If they do bite, it hurts and can cause nausea and "giddiness". (Actually, we could use a little more giddiness around here.) They are apparently timid spiders. I guess that means they're shy, but really nice once you get to know them.

Where did we find it, you ask? That morning, while I did the school run, Jason offered to take my car and put petrol* in it for me. Cause when I leave to go somewhere with the kids, I'm usually running late and if I have to stop then I'm even more later and stuff. So with Grace in tow, he goes to the station, fills up the car. While driving back, he feels something crawling on his neck.

This is the point in the story where I involuntarily shivered. "Did you totally freak out?" I asked. "No," he says looking at me like I'm crazy. "I took it and threw it across the car, and then looked at it when we got home. I'm almost positive it's dead. I saved it cause I thought you might wanna blog about it."

There. Do you see that? In his moment of crisis, facing possible death or dismemberment, or at least loss of bladder control, he thought of you, bloggy friends. Do you see now why I love him so?

We think that maybe it was on the outside of the car, and then when he was leaning in to put Grace in her seat, it got on him. Creepy, eh? So after this little story, I thanked God for two things. One, that it didn't land on Grace! And two, that it wasn't me driving the car with a spider on my neck. Cause I woulda totally spazzed out. Oops--I also thanked God that it didn't bite Jason. My hubby, however, has the strength of ten men, so I'm sure the spider's bite wouldn't have effected him the way it would normal humans. He gets his super strength from our yellow sun, you see.

This has been another installment of Creepy and/or Interesting Creatures We See Around These Parts. (I really need to think of a better title.) Anyhoo, if you're just joining us here at MDU, you can see more spiders here and here. And you'll want to click on parts one and two of the "lizard that got loose in our house" story. Oh--and here's some nice birds to make you feel better.

Have a lovely, non-creepified day! Mwaahahahaaa!

*That's "gas" to my American readers. Y'all see how assimilated to the culture I am?