How cute is this picture? This was when my (then) 2.5 year old drew his adorable spider pictures. If only real-life spiders looked this sweet in real-life. They are much easier on the eye than the real thing, huh?!

I live in the middle of Utah at a high elevation. We get your typical black widow which elicits a typical hysterical reaction from THIS typical girl. But it's the giant field spider which basically looks like a mini tarantula running past me at full speed that usually makes me lose my shit. They are aggressive, get very big in late summer and strangely, are incredibly fast and agile.

I believe that they are these. But I've ran into many, many of them around here. And it usually ends with me holding a shoe or wasp spray in my hand cursing my life and even the Good Lord himself. 

So after a mild winter and a really hot summer my garden beds were lurking with these monsters and when they finally started showing up IN my house, things got real.  

My local bug-control has increased in price to $190 a spray. Um, no. My desperation was overridden by thriftiness.  After researching tons of reviews on Amazon I decided to release the chains of dependence and buy some bug spray and do it myself. I decided to empower myself (cue applaud). 

My husband was annoyed that I hadn't simply went with a local bug sprayer so we could be done with it. So when the Talstar insect poison showed up on my doorstep, he let it be known that I was aaaallll alone on this one. Whatever. 

After assembling a five dollar weed/pest sprayer from Walmart. I measured 1 ounce of poison to 1 gallon of water. Conveniently, the poison bottle is designed in a way that I didn't have to get out any measuring cups of my own. Phew! 

I donned on my rubber boots and some disposable gloves and was ready. 

I sprayed the entire perimeter of the outside of the house and really drenched the doorways. I sprayed about two feet up the house and about 2 to 3 feet out from the house. And all in between those parameters. 

The spray really had no scent to it and the process was much more straightforward than I thought. The following day I even found some dead bugs all around the siding. Remember that this kills ALL bugs. Even the cute little potato bugs. Sad.

Now mind you, I did not spray INSIDE the house because, quite frankly, I was a bit paranoid. On the bottle it does say Indoor/Outdoor but it still made me nervous.

Well, two days later I was starting to wash dishes that morning when I suddenly came across a black widow in my sink!!! Building a web around the dirty dishes!! SHIIIIIT!!!! My husband was gone (of course) so I used my kids as vocal support as I finally killed it and rinsed it down the sink. WTF!! That's never happened in the sink before!

My husband figured that it must have crawled up from the plumbing somehow and then he said, WAIT. You never sprayed the inside of the house? Um no!... What if the poison killed us in our sleep?!! 

So THEN my husband finally stepped in and we cleared the perimeter of the inside of our house and sprayed, especially under the window sills and under the sinks.

Exhaaaaale.

So far, so good. No spiders yet and we are entering the worst months for giant rogue spiders. The nice part is that now I  am in control of the spiders and they aren't in control of me.

Now, if you want to be horrified and join me in this horror that is my own hell... Then please keep scrolling. If you are not interested in self-infliction then STOP and back out of here now.

Keep scrolling....

Keep scrolling...

You're such a trooper. Now gaze upon the spiders that I have had to kill in or around my house this past summer. Yes, I documented them and no, I'm not sure why I do.