The Salesman, Spiders, and the Heebie-Jeebies

I hate it when strangers come to the front door.  I don't personally despise the people that do it.  I know they've got products to sell or beliefs to share and I support that.  I just don't enjoy telling people no thanks, not interested, or not today.

Once upon a time I was the person that would show up at people's front doors.  But I wasn't selling anything or bringing Good News.  I wasn't even bringing lower case good news.  I worked as a process server throughout my college years.  If you don't know, process servers are the people that show up with eviction notices, divorce papers, or subpoenas to appear in court.  Like I said, not good news.  So I've got some level of sympathy for these guys.

But this last week I saw a uniformed guy going door-to-door while we were eating dinner so I did what every sympathetic person would do.  I closed the blinds and pulled the curtains closed so we could pretend like we weren't home.  I told my wife and child not to make a peep and then I spied on him.  I saw him go up the steps at the next-door neighbor's house and ring the door bell.  He glanced toward my house while he waited and I darted back from my hiding spot between the curtains.  Twenty minutes went by and there had been no knock on the door so I assumed my non-verbal message was received clearly.  I opened the curtains and the blinds and went about my normal post-dinner routine.





And then it came.  Knock, knock.  Who's there?  Interrupting cow.  Interrupting cow [Moooooo].  (That's my daughter's favorite joke right now except when she tells it, she politely waits for you to finish asking "Interrupting cow, who?" before she says "moooooo" and breaks into hysterics.)

This guy had caught me with my blinds open so I had to at least give him the courtesy of listening to his pitch.  He was selling a discounted neighborhood rate for organic poison that they would guarantee would kill all our ants and spiders from the foundation of the house all the way to the curb.  If all the neighbors did it, we could rid the entire block of pests!  But wait, there was more!  As part of their expert service they also look for spider egg sacks so they not only kill the existing spiders but future generations as well.  It sounded like a great deal if you hate living things.

Spider webs are all over this geranium.

I don't want to get too preachy because I know people have different views on this (including one friend of mine who may or may not read this blog).  But since this is my blog I'll tell you where I stand.  I don't like spiders.  They creep me out.  I'm pretty sure there is dead tissue in my arm from a black widow's bite.  But the worst thing about spiders are their webs.  They are everywhere this time of year and they not only collect dead bugs but every bit of yard debris small enough to get kicked up in the wind.  It's a giant, ugly, ghastly mess. 


Blades of cut grass caught up in spider webs along my fence.

Every time I want to relax in my Adirondack chair I have to bring my "spider stick" so I can knock down the webs that I know will be all over the chair and threaded through the slats of it.  It's a pain in the butt but it beats the feeling that you are sitting on top of a spider's nest.  And really, is there a worse feeling in the world than running your face through a spider web?  No, there isn't.  Plus, once you run your face through a spider web, you are bound to get the heebie-jeebies all day long and every time you feel something you have to assume it's the hairy legs of the spider who built that web and it is about to crawl into your ear and exact gruesome revenge on you for having destroyed its hard work.  (In my mind, "gruesome revenge" could mean any of the following: biting your ear drum, laying eggs in your ear canal, or simply taking up camp in your ear and refusing to leave.)

In spite of my loveless relationship with spiders, I have so far avoided the temptation to spray my yard to destroy them because I have read enough about beneficial bugs (spiders aren't insects, apparently) to be concerned about preserving the predator-prey balance in my yard.  I know that if I destroyed generations of spiders in my yard I would only be trading one pest for several others and right now I'm not dealing with aphids or mites or scale and I don't want to.  I just have to put up with the inconvenience of spider webs and, from time to time, I have to smash one in a Kleenex and flush it down the toilet if it decides to take up residence inside.

Like the weeds in my lawn, the spider webs that adorn my fences, eaves and corners are visual representations of my reluctant acceptance of the idea that in order to maintain my garden in a way that I feel good about, I have to accept that there will sometimes be aspects of it that I don't necessarily like.

So, I've been researching non-toxic deterrents for spiders for those areas where I would prefer them to stay away.  The one suggestion that seems to come up most often is to use lavender.  Um, that picture right above this with the spider web attached to the flower . . . that's lavender.  Any other recommendations?