The war against the impending darkness continues.

The war against the impending darkness continues

I'm doing dishes tonight and BOOM! A gigantic spider just erupts into the house from under the backdoor, literally as if it was thrown in here. I freeze, my heart stops, and I wonder what to do. We stare at each other. Time stands still. I'm barefoot, I realize, and he has WAY more hiding places available to him than I do. I go for the best option: my husband.

Wayne comes strolling in casually and says : "it's just a wolf spider."
Just. It's JUST a palmetto bug. It's JUST a cockroach. It's JUST a man-eating cephylopod.
Garg.
"Watch your husband work," he gloats, as he pulls out his best weapon. My mop! I scoff. Then I run for the dining room and watch from atop a chair.
He rails down on it with the end of the mop as if he's going to hit it, and then we both watch in dismay as the spider heads for the stove. Oh no! I think, he's going to miss it. I almost tell him to get out of the way, but he, looking resolved, grabs a spray bottle filled with some ORange Cleaner and, making loud laughing noises, sprays the crap out of the underside of the stove where the spider has now neatly escaped to. Wayne turns the mop around and uses it to mop up the cleaner, which is puddled all over the kitchen floor. I seriously consider smashing him with a mop, and then sigh, resigned.

They're out to get us, you see. First the roaches. Now wolf spiders. Wayne says the good thing is that wolf spiders aren't poisonous. "You'll just get a headache," he says, as if I should be reassured that when that hairy, disgusting, gigantic jumping monster is crawling on me in my sleep and sinking it's fangs into my leg, I won't die.
He stops my rant about the bug attack and tells me: Wolf spiders eat roaches.

"no way," I say. "Roaches have no natural enemies. I read that on google."
"Barbie, " he sighs. "I work under houses all day, and I can tell you that all I saw down there were huge roaches caught in spider webs.
Hmm. That sounds good to me... except... oh yeah. Roaches, as filthy and revolting and hellsent as they are, don't bite. The worse thing they can do is crawl on you really fast. Spiders, on the other hand, are fast, disgusting, and painful. Some can actually kill you. "I'll take a roach over a spider." I groan, settling into the rocking chair, keeping a suspicious eye on the floor by the stove, and imagining in what horrible scenario this spawn of Satan will next appear in my life.
Will I be reaching into Annika's toybox? Will I be gathering up a load of laundry from the floor? Will I be sitting at the desk, doing my morning devotional, when suddenly.. there it is in all his furry atrociousness?
I'll be surprised if I sleep a wink tonight, and God knows I need it.

Determined not to allow fear to overcome THIS daughter of the King, I set my jaw, put some (closed toe) shoes on, and headed for the kitchen to take out the trash.
I stepped outside gingerly, wondering how many more of his friends were around. I realized then that a box of oreos had somehow not made it into the trash, and leaned over to pick it up. Right then, a HUGE cockroach jumped directly into my face! I screamed bloody murder. All the neighbors on their porches looked at me like I was from mars, and I ran back inside, shaking out my hair and shivering. I'm telling you, they are out to get me. Once inside, I ran to my man to relate the story, and he laughed.
"You didn't know they can fly?" He asked.

When will it end, God?? When will the battle with southern vermin cease? Oh that's right, when I'm in heaven. Sheesh.
I read today that most UFOs are actually swarms of cockroaches. It also appears that I was right about them surviving nuclear warfare-- they can stand radiation up to 15 times better than humans. They do have two natural enemies: wasps and centipedes. I can't decide which of those I would rather have in my home.

I also discovered there 's a name for what I am: verminophobe. Ha. Alright, I'm off to the cockroach behavior forum