Charlotte's Crotch Webs

Being Buddhist-ish is harder than one might think.  I'm down with the chanting and the meditating... striving to follow the "middle road" and all that jazz.  I believe in the underlying principles that form the foundations of Buddhism, but how does one deal with the bugs?!!

As a general rule, we don't kill bugs in this house.  I value life no matter how small, as part of the general ecosystem.  However, I'm scared to freaking death of bugs.  Terrified, heart-attack worthy, jump on a chair and squeal like a girl kind of scared.  Because of this paralyzing fear, in the past when I used to kill bugs I'd have to not only just squish them, but beat the living fuck out of them with a shoe until they didn't remotely resemble their former shape any longer.  In partially conquering this fear, it's allowed me to be calmer and more collected when I do see a bug.  It takes the same amount of energy to trap the effers and chuck them outside than it does to kill them, yet killing them has a greater cost both to your spirit and the circle of life.

Well that's what I felt until today, actually.

The Dilf and I have been lying in bed moaning a lot lately.  No, not for fun, you dirty buggers!  We've been really sick for the past few weeks.  Flu, colds, strep throat...  you name it.  The kind of sick where you can't really move or do much of anything.  Our kids turned feral and our house fell so deeply into a mire of dust, dog hair and dirty dishes that I'm still working on getting it back into a livable state.

That, and the spiders have taken over.

Yes, you heard me.  They knew we were sick.  They could sense it.  They moved in, set up shop and started to build webs all over the corners of our house.  If 'Miss Havisham Chic' ever came into vogue, I'd have a head start.   This morning as I started to revive through the miracle of conventional medicine (yay anti-biotics!), I noticed what they'd done the second my back was turned.

I Windexed, I tottered around in my marabou pumps with a feather duster (heh), I vacuumed, scrubbed, cursed, sweated, cursed some more...  Just when I finally thought that I'd rid the house of the scourge of webs, (and oh, what a tangled web we weave!) I noticed that some hooker of a spider had weaved a nest.  A nest containing little baby spider eggs:  In The Buddha's crotch!  Yes, nestled into the perfect little hollow in the statue was a safe little spot for Charlotte to drop her bastard children.  What a ho, that Charlotte.

It's winter in Canada.  The Buddha was taunting me.  I was tempted to vacuum it up and be done with it.  Was I going to get rid of the spider nest (from Buddha's crotch, no less) so that they'd die, was I going to put the egg sac gently outside where they might also die from exposure, or was I going to let the damned thing hatch in the house and deal with the hundreds and thousands of babies that might possibly hatch out of it later?

Well, I'm not a completely heartless bitch.  What do you think I did?  I gently cradled the nest on a small piece of paper and moved it to a really high shelf in the garage.  It's still part of the house, just not "in" the house, technically...   I'm sure the Dilf will never notice, having them in such an abundance out there already.  ;)