spider story

[Amanda]

> Iggy here:
> 
> *chuckle*  Just comfort yourself with these facts:
> 
> 1: Brown recluses don't like people and tend to want to hunt only 
in narrow
> spaces, given the choice.  You should be pretty safe in your bed.

Yes, but when you're up at 3 a.m. nursing your baby, and one crawls 
out from under the couch between your feet and takes off across the 
floor, it *does* pretty much wake you up for the rest of the night.

Have lots more recluse stories, including my cat spitting a full-
grown live (if groggy) one out at my feet (had not bitten him); or 
finding *two* in the kids' bathtub (ugh). Best story of all involves 
unpacking a box of paperback books (finger-and-thumb method, one well-
shaken book at a time), locating a recluse that fled into the 
recesses of the remaining books (damn), locating a scorpion that did 
the same (*damn*), and finding them beneath the last book. Scorpion 
had killed the spider. I did thank it nicely before I killed it, too.

At this point, I can tell a recluse from other house spiders by the 
way they *walk.* Scorpions and recluses = house. Black widows = 
outside (in mailbox, on lawn furniture, etc., but *outside*, thank 
God for small favors).

Welcome to Texas. We won't even *start* on wasps. 

~Amanda