Eight-Legged Freaks

I hate spiders. While I understand they serve a purpose in the food chain, I have zero use for them and don't want them inhabiting the same space I am. House spiders and jumping spiders are annoying, but my hatred of what we call Garden Spiders around here knows no bounds.

The spider I'm talking about is the Desert Grass Spider. The most obvious sign you're dealing with one is the funnel web in grass or a pile of debris or whatever. They can get rather large, scare easily and can cover a lot of ground in a very short time. That, and they love to hide in stuff that doesn't move very often. That's a huge problem when inventory and test equipment is stacked on shelves.

They get into the workshop via the huge gap at the bottom of the door. Perfect entryway for anything that crawls. I witnessed this twice last night. I see motion out the corner of my eye and picked out the well-camouflaged spider on the floor. Female. Fat with eggs. Great, just like the one a few days ago. So what did I do? Grabbed the vacuum and sucked it up. Just one problem: The spider's fat abdomen got stuck in one of the air channels. I kept the vacuum running and tried some tricks to change the airflow. Man they're tough. As I was dealing with this, I saw a twin of the now-dismembered spider go running from the door crack to just outside the space under my shelving. A quick hit with the vacuum was unsuccessful as I didn't strike fast enough

With the persistent spider done for, my attention turned to killing the newest unwelcome guest. I swear those things are intelligent. I played the waiting game and it came out, but the moment I grabbed the vacuum nozzle, it ran back under the shelving. Waiting again resulted in the same thing. I wasn't about to miss the third time. And I didn't. I shot her with brake cleaner. She didn't like that at all. It's funny watching spiders stumble around.

The beast went back under the shelving and probably died there. I'll find out eventually.

I'm sealing that gap and then bug bombing the hell out of the shop before I do any drywall work.