Spiders!

Mike went on a business trip back in September and so Anders and I invited Nikki and her son Bridger over for a slumber party. We were loading up the car getting ready to head out for a hike when I noticed a beautiful spider in the garage. Big, black, and so shiny. "Nikki, come check out this spider!" As we were admiring her, we noticed the red hourglass. Yikes, a black widow! And a big one too. Her abdomen was at least the diameter of a dime. As we were checking her out, she quickly ducked out of sight.

I'm generally pretty tolerant of bugs as long as they aren't crawling on me, but black widows are a whole different story. We store things in the garage. I would hate to accidentally threaten a black widow or bring one into the house. Time to call in the exterminator.

We love our exterminator. We had him out a couple of years ago when carpenter ants had decided that a log house seemed like a good place to live. We contacted him on a Saturday, thinking that we could at least leave a message so that we could schedule an appointment for the following week. Instead, he returned our call within about an hour and a half and said he would be "super excited" to come out right then to help us out. He is such a bug geek and even recites findings from academic papers on spiders. He had so much fun finding the ant trail, following the ants from the house back to the forest, and explaining to us how carpenter ant colonies work. On top of all that, he uses the least toxic substances he can. The ants were gone the next day.

So, back to our spiders. We decided to have the exterminator do his thing while Max was away at radioactive camp. Meanwhile, Anders and I would head over to Nikki's while the exterminator did his work. The exterminator came out and I gave him a tour of the trouble spots. He got started in the garage while Anders and I packed up. Shortly thereafter, he came running back to the house: "Corinne! Corinne! I found a black widow!" And he has a live black widow hanging from his equipment - pretty cool. I just love that this guy gets so excited about finding the bugs. Mind you, this was a different (smaller) spider than the one that I saw, so there was more than one in there! I'm glad I called him.

While the exterminator worked, we had a lovely afternoon in Underwood. Nikki made us a delicious lunch and then we all went on a hike with Bridger and Anders in the stroller together. In this photo, they have traded toy cell phones. Looks like gadget envy starts early in these two boys.

- Corinne, Mike, and Anders Rocket