Of widows and boots
| April 2, 2013 | Posted by Melinda under Uncategorized |
I have a problem.
There’s a black widow in my Ariat terrains.
I know this because like any good country girl, I don’t put my hands (or feet) in places that I can’t see. And I saw it. It’s fat shiny body. Before it crawled back into the toe.
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I sympathize. My spider-in-shoe story: Stuffed my foot into my sneaker. Felt something in the toe area. Assumed it to be paper or some other random bit of stuff. Pull sneaker off, shake it. Out falls a large, hairy brown spider. Proceed to shriek, jump around, finally squish it.
Years later, I *still* shake out my shoes before putting them on. And I live in supposedly civilized suburbia…which apparently isn’t immune to creepy-crawlies.
My husband had a similar experience with a motorcycle helmet and his reaction was to put it in a bucket of water and leave it there for a week.
Ew. Ew ew ew ew ew. Ew.
Found a mouse in my boot once. Mostly dead.
I screamed like a little girl.
Pretty soon the mouse was all-dead. Not an improvement IMHO.
(maybe use a firehose???)
I got shudders. Blech. And now I feel obligated to check everything I own…even though widows aren’t so frequent here.
Toss the boots in the washer and put them on a double (triple, quadruple) cycle. Drown that sucker and get clean shoes in the process!
Gross… gross.. have heeby jeebies just reading this..I am with you, those terrains would be dead to me…. dead I say…
They are six years old. is that old enough that I can justify getting rid of them even though they’re not technically worn out?
I would help you. I love spiders. But I think you need new boots!
Aaarg! Couldn’t you spray some insect spray in there, and once it’s dead it should shake out? Yuck, good luck.
See, the only reason I’d try to do in the widow in your boots is to KNOW IT’S DEAD. If it’s not in your boots (dead), then WHERE HAS IT GONE? That’s what I’d lose sleep over. Where will it turn up next?
Can you throw your boot in a bucket of spider killer? Or just spray the inside of it really really well, after taking out the laces and such. Of course you might not want to wear your boot after that, but at least the black widow would be dead.
That’s exactly my problem. I saw it, and i didn’t see it get shaken out, so I don’t believe my boyfriend or barn manager when they didn’t find it because I saw it and it was there and I didn’t see it come out so where did it GO?
I’m thinking that a small mirror (say, from an old makeup compact?) and flashlight can help here, so that you can actually see into the toe of the boot. The spider likely crawled out sometime the last 2 weeks to go get some food. That or fill the foot part with baking soda for a day or some other substance that will suffocate the spider.
Widows seriously creep me out too. It’s the same sort of heebi-jeebies I get when discovering a giant, seething wasp nest where you weren’t expecting one, but more so. Because ever since we were little, we know the truism that if you get bit by a black widow, you WILL DIE.*shudder* It puts me in mind of that one that made a web on the sliding door in Davis and Mom and Dad put it in a glass container and it was the curiousity of the neighborhood. Not sure what they were thinking, giving it to us with just a snap top, but it was fantastic to oogle.