One of the least pleasant aspects of country life is the variety and number of critters with whom we often share our humble little cottage. For the first couple of Decembers  when I came down for the weekend, I found the place overrun with mice and ladybugs. The mice I expected, but the hundreds of ladybugs, both living and dead were a surprise.

Other parts of the year bring all manner of flying insects, ants, naturally, fleas, ticks, and one of my very favorites: wood roaches. The sight of one in the house causes Anne to display that most Southern of conditions known as the “hissy fit”, and the pile of mulch next to the house is full of them. {Note to self: Make sure they dump the next pile further from the house. Better yet, hire someone to distribute the stuff as soon as it is delivered.}

Our current plague seems to be spiders. I’m not talking about black widows or brown recluses, the ones that can turn your switch off permanently if you’re not careful. I’m talking about your average, run of the mill webslinger, the kind that, overnight, can spin a web the size of a pickup truck in the bathroom. Now, intellectually I know that spiders are very beneficial to the control of other insects, and that we shouldn’t kill them indiscriminately. And I don’t as long as they stay outside. I’ve watched the spider in the picture above work on that web for two days now. The architecture of a well built spiderweb is one of nature’s engineering miracles, and this one looks particularly well done.

But, should the little dude who built that beauty decide to move inside, it’s squash-city for him. I’ve been bitten by spiders twice in the last four years. Both times at night while I was asleep, and both hurt like the dickens when I awoke. They also took several months to heal and left permanent scars. So my live and let live policy with the natural world doesn’t apply to spiders in the house. I take no chances, and I take no prisoners.

Here are a few comforting thoughts. No matter where in the world you are, you’re usually no more than six feet from a spider.  And those daddy long-legs we used to let crawl on us as kids….those daddy long-legs have a very dangerous venom, one of the most dangerous venoms to humans. Luckily, their mandibles (jaws) aren’t strong enough to break our skin. Now, isn’t that special?