Posted on January 11, 2009 - by Amanda

How To Kill a Spider

This is another re-posting of an old favorite. (Ed.)

We always hope when there is a spider crawling by that our husband is home and ready to do away with it. Not that we aren’t capable of handling the situation but because, really, we prefer not to. Who wants to squish a squishy little thing? Especially when that thing is creepy and crawly! However, we all end up sometime, somewhere, in the company of a spider but without a helpful man. What to do?

Whatever you do, do it quickly! You don’t want the creepy little thing getting away from you while you analyze the situation. Fortunately women are inherently good at analyzing on the fly, as it were.

First step is to know your options. You have three basic weapons for killing the spider. The napkin squish, the shoe slap or (my favorite) the vacuum suck. You can easily substitute toilet tissue, paper towels or even rags or something out of the dirty clothes (you will wash it right?) for a napkin. Shoes, slippers or magazines (never books) work for the slap and both your trusty full size vacuum or the handy little hand-vacs work well for sucking the spider into oblivion. I have used my various vacuums on everything from spiders to wasps to ants and never had anything crawl back out so you can lay that little fear to rest.

Next assess the spider. Is it large? Small? Swift? Slow? If large then you likely won’t want to use the paper napkin approach, too much squish communicated from your weapon to your hand. If it is moving quickly you probably have to use whatever is at hand in order to prevent it getting away and hiding to scare you a second time.

When faced with a wolf spider you can only use either a slipper or the vacuum. The little things move so fast and jump around so wildly that you can’t risk getting it on you or losing it all together if you go in with a napkin. We usually have an idea of where we left our hand-vac and so can move quickly and strategically while keeping an eye on the tragectory of the spider.

Most large, leggy spiders move fairly slow so finding a slipper or the vacuum isn’t too difficult but there are large, hairy varieties that move fast so just grab and strike when you’re faced with them.

Also don’t worry if you spill your curds and whey when you jump for a weapon. The mess isn’t going anywhere so you can clean it up when the spider is dead.