I'm gonna have sons. And train them to be spider killers from their youth up. Is twenty months too early to begin?

Everybody remembers from here, here, and here that I don't like spiders. Scratch that. I live in Mortal Dread of spiders, especially these spiders, who have considerately claimed our house as their frontier. I know. Very sweet of them.

We set off nifty spider bombs every few months, and then my peace of mind is restored for many moons. I see hide nor hair, (ugh, hairy spiders are the worst,) of my arch nemesis, and I don't think it necessary to gingerly lift every surrounding piece of furniture when I sit on the floor, just to be on the safe side.

Then, when I totally relax and spiders fade away into the hazy recesses of my mind like a terrible nightmare of yesteryear, one will scurry across the floor and we're right back to square one. (Mortal Dread, in case you've forgotten.)

Tonight, as Lee and Ben were playing beside the piano and I was curled up in front of the fire with a volume of Christina Rossetti, Ben casually called out "Hey, KK, there's a huge spider over here."

My heart begins to race. My palms grow sweaty. Spots dance before my eyes. (okay, okay. i'm exaggerating just a bit. but you get the general idea.)

I tiptoe over to the piano, and sure enough, there's a monstrous, grey, weather beaten spider perched half under the piano, half out. In other words, protected enough that I knew I couldn't kill him, and precariously close to the safe darkness under our piano.

I begin to hyperventilate. The boys think it's cool that KK is wheezing with every breath and that they can actually hear her heart pound.

I tell Lee to get the flyswatter, (although my hopes of actually killing the beast were small,) and when he brings it I actually get half a hit on the monster, but the piano was sheltering him. Traitorous piano.

Old Devil, (his name, I believe,) darted under it, and at this point I realized this meant that I would be in the same room with a free Old Devil, pretty much at his mercy. (Those spiders can creep up on a girl, let me tell you. I have EVERY sympathy for Miss Muffet.)

The boys enthusiastically agreed to keep guard over the piano and let me know if there were any developments. (Don't feel sorry for them; they thought it was great fun, and pretended to be G.I. Joes.)

In a couple of minutes, Ben says "There he is!" and then while I'm tiptoeing back over, "Pleeeease may I kill him, KK?"

Um, be my guest, dear boy.

So he smashed Old Devil to smithereens while I cheered him on from the safety of a neighboring chair.

Then a few seconds later, after I've gently settled back into a reclining position before the fire, I hear Lee sing out "oh, look! a relative!"

Oh, goody. A relative.

I feel Quite Ill.

Lee kills the relative with alacrity.

I spend the rest of the evening as nervous and jumpy as a cat on a hot tin roof, wearing my crocs, and making sure the boys stay where they can leap to their timid Aunt's assistance at a moment's notice.