Caitlin’s Blog

I like to think I’m pretty level-headed when it comes to bugs. I’m not usually one of those girls who screams every time she sees a little spider, but I have to say, when they’re large, and there’s a lot of them, and they’re in my room…then I tend to object.

Apparently this is the season when spiders try to come inside for the winter, as my room mate and I discovered last night. Because Balch is a pretty old building, there’s no air conditioning, so it can get pretty hot in here. That’s not a huge problem, because we can just open our windows and turn a fan on, but it turns out our screens don’t work too well. And that’s how the spiders get in.

My room mate, Nancy, doesn’t like spiders. In fact, she freezes at the sight of them, so when we found several on the walls by the window (pretty close to her bed) she got upset. Most of them were small, but one was really big, about the size of a dime with big thick legs, and that was when I stopped being able to handle it. Fortunately, Nancy knew a couple guys who would be more than willing to come rescue a couple distressed damsels, so she called them to come over.

When they got here, even they were a little hesitant when they saw the big guy. At this point Nancy had retreated to the hall, where she stood with her back to the wall, silently watching our eight-legged room mate. I stayed where I was (I knew there weren’t any spiders there, and I was unwilling to take my chances in a new location), and the boys, more sqeamish than they wanted to admit, tried to work out a plan to take care of the spider.

In the end, it took a couple tries with various shoes and books before they finally killed it. They did a sweep of the room, took care of a few little spiders, and left. It was a while before Nancy stopped shrieking everytime something touched her, but we finally got to bed, and I don’t think we’ve opened the windows since.