American Airguns Blog
Friday, October 07, 2005
Spider Hunting
Mold, I hate mold. Last summer I replaced my kitchen vinyl with ceramic tile and when we pulled up the old vinyl and subfloor there was a bunch of black mold around the washing machine area. Obviously, there had been a slow leak around the washing machine and hence the mold. Since then we have noticed mold growing on stuff in the house and my son seemed to sneeze a lot when he came over to the house.
So, a few weeks ago we had the crawl space under the house and the HVAC system cleaned of all mold. It has improved the air quality in the house and with some of the improvements made to the A/C unit we have better air movement. One interesting side effect of the cleaning under the house is that it seemed to drive out a whole bunch of big ugly spiders. Evidently, they didn't like the cleaner used under the house to get rid of the mold or the cleaning process disturbed their "homes". Either way the exterior of the house was lined with webs with these big ugly spiders.
Now I know that spiders help control some of the bug problems but there were just too many of them and it was spooking my wife and even my son a little bit. One night as the dog was out doing her thing, I noticed that a big bug had just flown into one of the webs near a light and the spider was spinning it up for a later snack.
My wife said she wanted the spiders eliminated, at least most of them around the back of the house. This was my mission and I had to figure out a way to do it. Of course I could have fought them with conventional weapons but that could have drug out a war that could have lasted for years. Instead I turned to my airguns. I have a Benjamin 317 and one night as the dog was again doing her business, I realized that a particularly big spider was positioned right off the back porch with the rear spot light shining on it's web. It was just setting there in plain site with nothing but woods behind it. Hmmm, I got my Benjamin and with about 6 pumps and a flat head pellet I approached the big ugly spider. It was oblivious to what was about to happen to it. I moved the end of the barrel up to the spider so that it was about an inch from it and squeezed the trigger. With a small poof sound the spider exploded into a spectaculr cloud of spider guts. It was particularly interesting since the spotlight was shining right on it and really highlighted the spiders demise.
There was still enough light left in the day so I checked around the rest of the house and found two more icky spiders that could be safely eliminated in a similar fashion. So far a total of three spiders elimnated. There are still more and I will have to go on another hunt this weekend to see how many more I can eliminate.
So, a few weeks ago we had the crawl space under the house and the HVAC system cleaned of all mold. It has improved the air quality in the house and with some of the improvements made to the A/C unit we have better air movement. One interesting side effect of the cleaning under the house is that it seemed to drive out a whole bunch of big ugly spiders. Evidently, they didn't like the cleaner used under the house to get rid of the mold or the cleaning process disturbed their "homes". Either way the exterior of the house was lined with webs with these big ugly spiders.
Now I know that spiders help control some of the bug problems but there were just too many of them and it was spooking my wife and even my son a little bit. One night as the dog was out doing her thing, I noticed that a big bug had just flown into one of the webs near a light and the spider was spinning it up for a later snack.
My wife said she wanted the spiders eliminated, at least most of them around the back of the house. This was my mission and I had to figure out a way to do it. Of course I could have fought them with conventional weapons but that could have drug out a war that could have lasted for years. Instead I turned to my airguns. I have a Benjamin 317 and one night as the dog was again doing her business, I realized that a particularly big spider was positioned right off the back porch with the rear spot light shining on it's web. It was just setting there in plain site with nothing but woods behind it. Hmmm, I got my Benjamin and with about 6 pumps and a flat head pellet I approached the big ugly spider. It was oblivious to what was about to happen to it. I moved the end of the barrel up to the spider so that it was about an inch from it and squeezed the trigger. With a small poof sound the spider exploded into a spectaculr cloud of spider guts. It was particularly interesting since the spotlight was shining right on it and really highlighted the spiders demise.
There was still enough light left in the day so I checked around the rest of the house and found two more icky spiders that could be safely eliminated in a similar fashion. So far a total of three spiders elimnated. There are still more and I will have to go on another hunt this weekend to see how many more I can eliminate.
