MetaChat - Ok, don't laugh, this is serious.

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04 August 2006

Ok, don't laugh, this is serious. I have told a few people what happened to me today. For some reason, they all thought it was funny, so I bring my sad tale of woe to the bunnies for some sympathy.

→[More:]As you may know, I live by a forest, a by-product of which is far too much wildlife that has 4+ legs.

Anyway, a few days ago I parked my car in the garage (which is right next to the forest) and I didn't need it again until this morning. I did not realise at the time that I'd left the sunroof open.

So I go down to the garage this morning, open the car door and - OMFG - it was full of spiderwebs (and, presumably) spiders. It was like the fucking Ghost Train.

I thought my one and only option was to quietly close the door, never go near the garage again and buy a new car.

As I stood in front of the garage trying not to pee myself, my neighbour, Jamie, showed up, about to leave for work. He's a biker, so I ended up putting on his wife's winter bike suit, full-face helmet and gloves so I could get into the car and drive it up from the garage to outside my flat, where I was then able to run the Dyson on an extension cord to vac away the webs to hell, my newly-acquired Bug Wand proving woefully inadequate for the task.

I did not find a single spider.

The car was going in today to get the alarm fixed, so I asked Lance, my car bloke, to check for critters and he said he didn't find any either. I vaccuumed every millimeter of the car, including the engine and underneath.

(and no I do not want to hear about all the places spiders can hide in cars, thank you.)

post by: essexjan at: 12:06 | 27 comments

ACK!

If it makes you feel any better, Mrs Chewy found a recumbent exercise bike on craigslist she wanted to buy. So we borrowed a big SUV from a friend to go down and pick it up. There were some extra car mats in the back, so I was moving them out of the way. A GIANT waterbug comes zooming out from under the mats and high tails it to the front seat area. We looked at each other and cracked up. I told her while driving it that if that thing touched me we were going in the ditch, fuck the bike.

posted by chewatadistance 04 August | 12:10

Uh, no laughing from me. Sounds like a nightmare. I guess you didn't think to take any photos, huh.

posted by iconomy 04 August | 12:11

total nightmare--like a Stephen King book. Maybe spray it really thoroughly too---one or two might have crawled in something to nest?

*shivers*

posted by amberglow 04 August | 12:13

Photos??!! Fucking photos??!! Are you fucking kidding??!!

*head asplodes*

posted by essexjan 04 August | 12:14

or maybe a repellant hanging thing for the rearview mirror? like these? (if they make em)

posted by amberglow 04 August | 12:16

That is so gross! Both of them!

Two weeks ago I was at Denny's (a big chain restaurant) having brunch and my friend found a beetle in my hair. I freaked the heck out. Her fiance and his daughter got a kick out of this.

I sympathize.

posted by halonine 04 August | 12:20

Thanks amberglow. Your suggestions are far more sensible than my gut-reaction spider-exterminating flame-thrower idea.

posted by essexjan 04 August | 12:23

I was fully prepared to laugh because, let's face it, I can be an asshole sometimes. But OHMYGOD that is horrifying! I'd still consider selling it.

posted by ferociouskitty 04 August | 12:23

essexjan, I'm not particularly squicky about spiders, but even I would have had a hard time with that.

I thought my one and only option was to quietly close the door, never go near the garage again and buy a new car.

yea, I could just imagine. that'd definitely be my first impulse too.

WARNING: if you are of the easily squicked persuasion, do NOT click on the following bug links. thankyoudrivethrough

for the record, my roommate happens to be a very large, very healthy, very hetero male. Every so often he'll encounter an earwig in the kitchen, at which point I hear a loud 'EURGH!!', followed by profanity, followed by a thud and/or random crashing noises as he proceeds to render said insect into six square centimetres of inanimate goo. And yes, we keep the kitchen spotless. The place has been de-bugged repeatedly. Earwigs (and fucking ginormous house centipedes too) are apparently almost unavoidable in Colorado. I'm guessing its a tradeoff for not having to deal with bedbugs, cockroaches and high humidity, like the poor East Coast folk do.

it's not so much that we're afraid of them, either. it's simply that 'holyFUCKhowdisgustingAAARRRGHHHHdiedieDIEDIEDIE!!!' reaction. Which, IMO, is perfectly natural.

so no, I'm not laughing. it's a great story too, and you can tell your colleagues, from me, that they are dicks.

posted by lonefrontranger 04 August | 12:26

You really, really don't want to check out boing boing today.

You especially shouldn't click on this link.

posted by bonehead 04 August | 12:27

I was kidding.

posted by iconomy 04 August | 12:30

About 15 years ago my then husband and I were out in the car, thankfully he was driving, when this enormous stag beetle started flying round the car. It was so big I thought it was a bird. I screamed at him until he stopped, got out and refused to get in again. He shrugged and drove off.

When I got home I made him search every inch of the car, but the thing was nowhere to be seen. I couldn't understand it, it was a monster. Where could it be?

It was ages before I'd get in the car again, but the next time I did, it was there, waiting, in the storage well of my door. I puked. The ex had thought I was being silly about it, but when he really saw how big it was (he'd been concentrating on driving before) he was freaked too. If I'd been driving that day we'd probably both be dead now.

Maybe this is God's way of telling me not to drive, by sending me plagues of beetles and spiders

posted by essexjan 04 August | 12:30

I'm generally fearless, but I become a standing-on-chair-eeking-50s-housewife at the sight of one of those big long hairy house centipedes.

Also, once my car had ants. I was driving a bunch of people somewhere and someone in the back seat commented "There are some ants walking around back here." When we stopped, I looked in the back seat and indeed saw a few ants. So I lifted the back seat, where it folded up (this was a hatchback), and nearly passed right out because there was an entire, very busy colony of hundreds of ants building the next civilization in there.

It was a little funny, but more squicky. I fogged the car - there was really no other choice.

posted by Miko 04 August | 12:33

Maybe it was one of these. Hmm...

Have you bought any bananas lately?

posted by weretable and the undead chairs 04 August | 12:38

House centipedes! I saw them for the first time when I moved to Chicago last fall. I nearly died.

posted by halonine 04 August | 12:48

That would not be a laughing matter at all, that's nasty!

posted by fenriq 04 August | 12:54

Once, a couple years ago, when my 91-year-old mom was driving, she felt something crawling up her leg under her slacks. She pulled over, went into a dressing room at Marshall's, and took off her pants. A dead yellow jacket fell out. It had stung her, but she was all right. Just some swelling. It's a wonder she didn't crash the car.

This could explain everything, by the by.

posted by Pips 04 August | 13:07

omg, the banana link! What a bizarre story.

And the ant colony, and the srag beetle! I'm beginning to feel very grateful that I don't have a car (or ever clean behind the refrigerator). eek!

posted by taz 04 August | 13:19

Okay.

I'm betting that if you would've investigated your car at night, then you would've found the spider(s) in question. Some spiders are neat and tidy in their hunting. I shared the balcony of an apartment with a very industrious spider. Around dusk, she would assemble a massive fly-catching web that stretched from the side-rail to the exterior wall and up to the eave (I was on the second floor). The whole build took about fifteen minutes. And there it would stay, all the night long.

The next morning, both web and spider would be gone.

This repeated every night for a spring and summer.

So maybe, just maybe, your spiders flung web about your car and just didn't have the decency to clean up after themselves. They just left with the rising sun, leaving you with the mess.

That's it. Rude spiders.

posted by grabbingsand 04 August | 13:40

no biggie. this is what bug bombs are for. roll up the windows, close the sunroof, and gas the fuck out of them.

posted by quonsar 04 August | 14:50

Eeek jan, yeah that would've utterly squicked me out too, and I don't normally have a problem with spiders. Tent caterpillars on the other hand (thanks for the reminder, bonehead) and ants. Little group-mind happy slave bastards. Die! Die!

posted by elizard 04 August | 15:29

Oh, I completely understand. While I don't have a problem with spiders on a regular basis, I get freaked when they run across my windshield (on the inside) or drape down in front of me. Then I get like Little Miss Muffet. Once, I was in my tiny bathroom of an apartment I was renting. I was looking in the mirror (probably tweezing), when along came a spider. It WAS HUGE, and it dropped from the low ceiling above me to right in front of my nose. I screamed, and grabbed the only spray I could find-hairspray. That sucker was stuck together! Yay for MegaHold!

posted by redvixen 04 August | 18:14

I would have freaked out as well. The mister hates spiders, too. We're a fine pair:

"You kill it!" "No, you kill it!"

posted by deborah 04 August | 18:35

jan, don't click here. And be glad you don't live in Australia.

posted by tommasz 04 August | 18:40

Ho ho ho! I need to do my next post in that series.

posted by weretable and the undead chairs 04 August | 19:28

Total sympathy to you, Jan. I was out driving last night and after I got off the freeway and stopped at a light, I noticed something moving fast next to my window. Looked more closely, and realized that it was a BIG honkin' spider that had apparently taken up residence behind the side mirror in the hollow concavity of the mirror holder, and had spun a line of web from there to the side window (RIGHT next to my head) and was now running frantically up and down and up and down the web line.

I spun the car around and took it straight into a nearby car wash. I mean, I am pro-spider, in the grand scheme of things, but not in any location that close to my head and neck. (I'd had that side window open just a few minutes earlier! Aaaiieee!!)

posted by kat allison 04 August | 19:50

The mirrors!!! The mirrors!! I didn't check the mirrors!! Of course, they all hid in the side mirrors!

And tommasz, I was born in Australia and lived there in my early childhood. I did not play outside much.

posted by essexjan 05 August | 03:03

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