I Know a Queen When I See One

So the other day started off like any other holiday off where I go to crossfit and my husband does yard work. I returned home to find him still outside working so I decided to go inside, put my gym stuff away and then hang out with him outside so he wouldn’t feel like he was the only one working, even though I wouldn’t be helping. So I walk up to our front door and there it was: a spider the size of my head. Or the size of my palm, it’s all kind of a blur.

So I scream and run to the other side of our yard and my husband asks “did that bug freak you out?” and I said “that spider is huge, you have to kill it before it kills us.” And he says “that’s not a spider, it’s a water bug”, and I’m not good at science but I know a spider when I see one. You want to know why? Because my parents made me watch Arachnophobia when I was seven and I’ve be traumatized ever since. I still look under lamp shades before I turn off a lamp and I eat my popcorn one kernel at a time because I’m afraid to eat a spider and have it bite from the inside and that’s how I die, even though that part of the movie made no sense unless you swallow your food whole and that would make you insane, and also a snake.

I wasn’t going to die by spider so I went through our garage to get inside the house, dropped off my stuff and went back outside. My husband kept insisting it was a water bug (I think so I wouldn’t be scared) and we continued our debate for the next hour before he finally agreed with me. After I showered and changed I decided to go outside and handle business. I grabbed a can of hornet and wasp killer because I don’t have spider killer and went outside to protect my home and family. I’m prepared to go to war when I notice the spider isn’t where it was an hour ago. It had moved, and it moved to THE TOP OF OUR FRONT DOOR. It was getting ready to murder me! The killer spray I had wasn’t the sharp-shooter kind so I had to get as close to the spider as I could without the both of us engaging in hand-to-hand combat. I slowly made my way to my foe and the closer I got, the weirder the spider looked. Turns out it wasn’t just a spider, it was a queen spider with about 40 more spiders. It was holding baby spiders an army of spiders on its back!

It was 41 spiders VS me, a fact that I yelled to my husband but because I don’t study insects for a living he didn’t believe me. I shook the can, pointed it at my enemy, and it DEPLOYED ITS ARMY! Mini-spiders everywhere. I sprayed – more spiders. I sprayed as much as I could before screaming and running away. It wasn’t until I reached safety that I started having flashbacks of the scene in Arachnophobia where the guy is trying to climb out the window but an army of spiders repel down and he has to abandon that plan. THAT COULD’VE BEEN ME IF I WOULD’VE WALKED OUT OF THE FRONT DOOR!  I ALMOST DIED! My husband watched this whole scene go down and when he saw the severity of it he had to come save me because I didn’t know what kind of weapons the queen spider and her army had. After he finished the job I walked back to the front door to inspect the scene and found this:

The queen spider built a castle where she had been planning her attack for god knows how long. At least I think this was hers. Other than spider webs I’m not sure what other dwellings house spiders. I’m not an engineer.

The moral of the story is if you think it’s a spider it is and it probably has an army on its back and will kill you and it’s probably been planning the attack for a while. And if you’re not scared of spiders then do yourself a favor and watch the movie Arachnophobia so you can learn the truth. And if you see something that looks anything like this thing in the above photo, get rid of it. Use a power washer, a flame thrower, bulldoze your house, I don’t know, just get rid of it. You’re welcome.