StarbuckDifranco's Journal

My summers seem to have themes.  There were summers where I had babies, of course. Summers I was unemployed but searching. The summer we first had blackberries in the backyard.  2 summers ago, it was the Summer I Went to Tennessee 3 Times. That was a good one.

This year so far in my mind, it is The Summer of Poisonous Spiders.  Let me introduce you to my mutant superpower: I find brown recluse spiders.

I can find a recluse if one exists in almost any building, anyway. Now, my parents' house has always had them to some degree, because they were in a new house constructed on land that used to be woods next to a horse farm.  But that was 8 years ago and now they have a regular suburban neighborhood all around them.  Their house is positively infested with fiddlebacks! The darn things must be living in the walls.  I killed 8 of various sizes during the month I stayed with them.

Then I get home, and the other night I killed a black widow spider who'd set up a web outside right next to our front door, of all things.  In the 11 years we've lived in this house now, I have only ever seen 1 black widow and that was under a rock I dug up in the yard in wintertime.  What the eff?