It’s summer in Florida which means plenty of rain and thunderstorms in between blazing hot and steamy weather. it’s also the season when daddy-long-leg spiders tend to invade the bathtubs after said rain.
Today was the second and final day of the great toy purge (which was sold to the resident toy users as a toy “sorting and organizing” project) which I’ve been procrastinating, successfully, for quite some time now. During the course of it, we came across some great little spinning tops and the launcher they work with (the ones you sent, Mom – they are still a big hit). These had been long forgotten, no doubt buried at the bottom of a bin filled with toy and gamepiece shrapnel for who-knows-how-many months, so it was like a new toy again. Sometime later, I was done enlisting their help with the sorting phase and off they went to play (thus enabling me to engage in the purging phase without the customary weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth).
Before long, I hear them in the bathroom that is just off the bedroom turned tv/playroom/toy warehouse where I’m restoring order. Since eavesdropping on their play is some of the best entertainment available to me, I’m listening as I go about my wanton discarding of stuff. I figure out from their chatter that they are launching the top into the bathtub. I foolishly assume this is because they are heeding my 17 warnings (and that’s only today’s count) that they are all big enough to keep track of their own toys and put them back etc. and *I* won’t be doing this all-weekend job again (i.e. “you keep it sorted and put away because the next time I had to do it I’ll just be putting it all in the garbage”). Obviously, they’ve taken my words to heart and so are launching the tops in tub where they can’t possibly get lost, right?
Um, no. Turns out they’re shooting spiders, so to speak. Or a spider – I’m not sure. This game went on for some time, though, with much discussion as to how each new launch should or should not be recalibrated to increase the probability of a hit. Apparently, “aiming” a spinning top is more a matter of luck than skill. Fortunately for them, a spider in a tub isn’t exactly going to make a getaway so they could take all the practice shots they needed.
A little later my presence was requested in the bathroom to “demonstrate our top secret mission”. Who knew that spiders in tubs were such a security threat? It’s a shame the spiders don’t have a better intelligence network – they could get the word out to the rest of the arachnid kingdom that the inside of my house is a combat zone and they’d be best to avoid it. I’d be fine with them passing the word along to the whole of the insect world, actually.
