Did I invite you?
We spent this weekend at the ranch, doing general ranchy stuff like drinking (good lord, we played quarters, even – haven’t done that in 10 years), taking rides (one night we got very close to an alligator that was swimming in a tank), shooting lots of guns, fishing, eating good food, and basically unwinding.
We did have a couple of uninvited guests, though. This young lady was out on the sleeping porch, and had a relative on the back porch as well as one in the cow skull on the patio. We let her live until just before we left on Monday, when we went round and sprayed them all. Beautiful and deadly.
This strapping girl was above the woodpile and had a nightly feast of grasshoppers and crickets. Her body length alone is about 1.5 inches – adding her legs into that, she’s bigger than your palm. We left her in peace, since she’s non-toxic and eats lots of bugs. She had a smaller friend on the air conditioner nearby.
There was also a scorpion scuttering around on the bedroom wall which I calmly whacked with a shoe but neglected to photograph. On our way out, we saw a yellowjacket nest that was probably at least 6 inches tall on the side of the house. We didn’t see any rattlesnakes this time, though.
Y’all city wussies don’t know what you’re missing.
September 3rd, 2002 at 11:11 pm
Arachnids are the single most important reason that I live in an urban area and not the country. Incidentally, like Adam Carolla, I do not believe that spiders actually do good for us or the rest of the ecosystem. “They eat pesky insects,” you might say. But have you ever actually seen a spider in the actual act of swallowing an insect? I want photographic proof.
But yeah, sounds like good times!
September 3rd, 2002 at 11:16 pm
Gawd! Where is this ranch? I just wanna know because I NEVER want to go there!
September 3rd, 2002 at 11:41 pm
OMG… just when I think I’m getting tired of the urban life and all the pavement and pollution, photos of those horrid things make me long for concrete.
A scorpion? On the bedroom wall? INDOORS? YOU WHACKED IT WITH A SHOE? *faint*
September 4th, 2002 at 3:25 pm
umm yeah, I have to say after that I’m *proud* to be a city wuss… bleah.
September 4th, 2002 at 10:10 pm
*shudder*
i can’t even deal with a single what-i-believe-to-be-a roach. there’s NO WAY i could deal with any of that. i only looked at one of your pictures and i felt myself jump a little.
i’ll stay a city girl, thanks 🙂
September 4th, 2002 at 10:31 pm
The ranch is in south Texas. The bugs are just bad during the summer because there’s nobody in the house like there is during hunting season. I was pretty surprised at my reaction to the scorpion – it was pretty big, but didn’t really freak me out. I expected that I would wet myself, but it was no biggie.
Steph, I’m with you on the roaches. I absolutely can’t deal with them. They send me into a screaming frenzy. Spiders don’t really bother me that much, though. The black widow was really very pretty, but I was a little wary about getting very close, understandably.
September 8th, 2002 at 11:53 pm
The idea of black widows scare me. Knowing that a small nest of baby widows can infest a mattress and kill someone in their sleep is enough for me to thwack one without hesitation. We had small scorpions in our old house and I promptly called the exterminator! I’ll take possibly deadly chemicals over pain inducing creepy crawlies anyday.
September 9th, 2002 at 12:20 am
er, christy… that black widow/mattress thing is something i didn’t need to know. 🙂 thankfully, i don’t think they live ’round these parts (seattle).
gah.
September 9th, 2002 at 1:10 am
Yeah, but Steph… y’all have the hobo spider around there.