I'll have the Cocoa Puffs. Hold the ants.

I've never been one of those people to get squirmy about insects. Well, for the most part. As long as they aren't actually on me. Okay, so maybe I get a little squirmy. But not when it comes to spiders. I know plenty of people who are terrified of spiders. But not me. I mean, as long as they're not actually on me. I am a spider killer. No. Scratch that. I am a spider slayer. True story

Death to all spiders!

Growing up, I was frequently called upon by Twin and Miss P.'s super tough, motorcycle riding, athletic, lumberjack boyfriend to KILL ALL SPIDERS. This was a job I completed valiantly; often times while laughing my ass off. I mean, consider for a moment Miss P.'s boyfriend- a guy taller than 6', easily over 230 lbs., a star athlete in high school, and a mighty woodsman to boot- running and screaming like a little girl. But no worries, I, the brave girl I was, 6 years his junior, saved the day and destroyed the menacing beasts (there may have been some taunting involved. I can't be sure. The details are fuzzy).

At any rate, spiders and I have had very few beefs over the years. We tend to have this mutual agreement. As long as they stay in their corner, all tucked-up, comfy cozy in their wittle webby webs, I won't kill them. There was only one time when they broke this agreement. This peace treaty, if you will.

I was temporarily living in a farmhouse in the Hudson Valley area of NY, and it had just entered the warm, rainy, early fall season. And by rainy, I mean torrential down pour. Evidently this was also the time the playful wolf spiders came out to play. Yes, I said wolf spiders. I can't say for sure if that's what they were. It's not like I'm an expert or anything, but they certainly looked like wolf spiders from what I could find on the internet.

Imagine sitting on the couch, eating some dinner, trying to watch TV, when this fucker runs across the room and hides under the couch!

These guys are out for blood!*

Yeah, and then imagine, out of the corner of your eye, you see another one scurry up the wall. You can bet your bottom dollar I was perched on top of the coffee table faster than you can say, "Fuck this!" There was no chance in hell I was stepping on the floor with those fuckers running around. Trust me, with a diameter easily 2" wide, those were not spiders you wanted to be stepping on while wearing your $2.50 Old Navy flip flops. Those fuckers not only crunched, they snapped, crackled AND popped.

And here's what Cornell University has to say about these lovely creatures:

Wolf spiders are named for their tendency to be slightly furry, brown or grey spiders that run after their prey. They have long sturdy legs and good vision from two of their eight enlarged eyes. The abundant wolf spiders forage on the ground or in the lower parts of plants at night. Female wolf spiders carry light-colored, spherical egg sacs attached to their spinnerets. Once hatched, the spider lings cling to hairs on their mother’s abdomen for about a week. 

And then, if you can believe it, they recommend this:

When you go out at night, look at the ground in front of you with a flashlight held next to your head at the same level as your eyes. You can see many silvery blue-green spots reflecting back at you from the eyes of numerous wolf spiders in the grass.

Hells no! Do you think I have some sort of death wish? Those fuckers run after their prey! Long story short, I was killing 3-4 of these fuckers a night. Thankfully they were partial to the living room, but once they started venturing out into the kitchen and towards the stairs, where the bedrooms were, well, let's just say I was out of that house no more than two weeks after the first sighting. I won't even tell you how many I killed, but the number was over 20. I carried a fireplace brush and a can of spider spray around with me everywhere I went. And don't even get me started on the zombie spider part of this story. Yes, I said zombie. Or maybe they were cannibals. I don't know. All I know is that the corpses never stuck around for long (I liked to leave the corpses lying about as a warning to the other spiders).

{Shudders}

Anyways, back to my original story (and because I'm pretty sure I've reached my quota for the use of the word "fuckers"). Me and bugs are generally alright with each other. And spiders and I are all good once again. Ants, on the other hand, ants are an entirely different story. I hate ants. I hate them because they are tiny and creepy and crawly and they are everywhere and most of the time, you don't even know it.

  

This one time, at band camp I was eating breakfast, Cranberry Almond Crunch, to be more specific, and I was watching TV while joyfully chowing down on my cereal. Well, The Today Show must have been particularly enthralling that morning, because when I felt a little tickle on my hand, I barely noticed it.

{Crunch, Crunch}

When I felt the tickle again, well, this time I noticed. I looked down on my hand and there was this little red ant. I quickly shooed him away. But then I noticed another one on my finger. Ew. And then I noticed a couple more on the spoon I was holding. WTF? And then, wouldn't you know it, I took a look at the cereal on the spoon, that I was about to put in my mouth, and there were MORE ants.

Fuck me!

I dropped the spoon back in the bowl in complete and utter disgust. And that's when it got a gazillion times worse. That's when I discovered how utterly disgusted one could actually feel. There were ants literally swimming in my bowl of cereal. And I had already eaten half the bowl.

Any ants in there? Hard to say. Could be cranberries, could be ants.

It took everything I could muster to not puke my Post cereal back up. I wish I could say that was the beginning and the end of my ant eating days, but alas, it was not. About 6 or 7 years later I had the exact same experience all over again. Only this time they were little black ants, and I was eating Cocoa Puffs.

Wow. Ants are racist.

* Just so you know, I browsed through over 50 pages of spider pictures to find the right one for this post. I'm sure I'll have nightmares about it tonight. You're welcome.