Dances with Spiders

This morning, I passed through the living room on my way to the kitchen to fix breakfast. As I passed by our coat closet, I spied a moderately large, moderately hairy spider sitting on the door. Naturally, this was discovered on the one day in recent history when Ben has had to leave the house early. So it was up to me to dispatch the beast. 

I ran and got the fly swatter, thinking I'd just smack the hairy little creep. I swung the swatter, and it seemed that my aim was true. Somehow, however, the spider ended up doing a back flip off the door. Whether this was due to my ineffectual swatting abilities, or the spider's own keen senses and jumping skills, I know not. Either way, I let out an involuntary shriek and jumped backward, tracking the beast's progress with my eyes, as it arched through the air and landed... in a basket of clean, folded laundry. 

My clean, folded laundry.

I panicked, visualizing the horror of putting on supposedly clean clothes, only to find a spider (dead or alive) lurking therein. 

I scanned the basket, but the spider was nowhere to be seen. 

I searched the floor around the basket, nudging each dark spot on the carpet in the hopes that it would turn out to be an arachnoidal corpse. 

Yes, I just made up that word. No, I did not find the spider. 

I began gingerly lifting clothes and shaking them, praying that the spider would be discovered so that I could finish what I started, win my battle with nature, and go about the rest of my day with my mind at ease.

No spider.

I continued to hover over the basket, hunting for some sign of wriggly, hairy, menacing life. I stood there at least ten minutes, possibly twenty. But the beast continued to elude my watchful gaze.

Finally, I had no recourse but to give up. I told Evie to keep her shoes on while she was getting ready for school, and to avoid the war zone in the living room. I got her ready to go, took her to school (giving the area around the laundry basket a wide berth), then spent the rest of my day so far hiding in my bedroom. 

I'm going to stay here, too, until Ben gets home and can carefully examine every piece of laundry in that basket. 

He will be my champion.

You've won the battle, spider, but you will NOT win the war!!!