great big bug

this morning. wake up to the alarm, deactivate. gaze blearily at the time -- and go back to sleep. about an hour later, to the noise of the distant chickens and dogs -- and the rapidly brightening sky outside the window (mango tree that used to bless the room in permanent twilight was taken down by a storm the year past) -- wake up and make my way downstairs to the bathroom.

kitchen light: on; dirty kitchen light: on; bathroom light: on.

odd sequence, you say? well, it's an old apartment, and sometime in the decades of occupancy someone felt the need to rearrange some elements (perhaps feng shui-related principles). the door to the bathroom formerly was directly on the landing at the bottom of the stairs, facing the stairs itself. this opening was walled up, and with the roofing over of the small concreted-over back yard (the dirty kitchen -- in more ways than one), the door was therefore repositioned to open from the new kitchen. for various now-unknowable reasons (though limited budget comes to mind), the roofing of the yard was accomplished with the least amount of materials: i.e., a few 2x4s, a few corrugated roofing sheets. the 2x4s were angled so as to provide a decent run-off for rainwater, but the side wall was not built up to provide any sort of sealing: the triangular hole was just covered with another corrugated roof sheet.

now why was all of that description necessary? well, just to set the stage for what followed early this morning. the roofing project does indeed make the yard fairly weather-proof, but as to other stuff like rodents, lizards and bugs, it's no proof at all.

so: we've got mice, rats, lizards, roaches, mosquitoes, and occasionally, great big spiders.

small spiders are ok with me -- the black house spiders, for example, or the small jumping ones. big ones i cannot abide...

...such as the one that was on the back side of the bathroom door as i closed it. in doing that, i managed to trap one of it's legs. taking slipper in hand, i missed hitting the thing as it scurried behind the large water drum that's on one side of the bathroom, where the door used to be.

hmm. can't take a bath with that thing lurking about. baygon in hand, i sprayed a good bit behind the drum, but no dice. the thing was staying put.

ah. tabo in hand, splashed water behind the drum. spider came out, heading for the lid. i missed again with the slipper, but the spider fell on the floor. i put the slipper on my foot, and as the thing made it's way to the door, i stomped on it.

...my foot bounced.

but i'd done enough damage that the thing curled up and rolled over.

ewww. i suppose it's a good thing that i didn't manage to splatter it's guts all over the floor...

it was the largest spider i've seen inside the house, actually. the others i'd seen before were somehow leaner and smaller, and a good swift whack with a broom was enough to disintegrate them. this one was a good two and a half inches worth of body length, never mind the legs at full extension. and strong enough to withstand a direct blow.

at any rate, just to make sure it was dead, i got some boiling water and poured it slowly over the carcass before washing it down the floor drain.

obviously i have a thing against large spiders, no?

...i know that they've a function in the great outdoors and all that, but i'd much rather they stay outside...

one of these days, will really have to consider ultimately fixing the dirty kitchen. but that's quite a whiles away, when there's budget to spare.