I don't like spiders

So I did something this weekend that I've been dreading for a long time. I crawled through the crawl space to the far end of the house to affix a piece of plywood over a vent that's been disconnected. Our cats have discovered how to remove the vent cover and get down into the crawl space so this problem needed to be solved.

I don't know why I chose this weekend to undertake this task, but I did. I decked myself in all sorts of clothing, not know what exactly I'd find. I took a light and some tools to the far end of the house, crawling on my hands and knees.

I saw some interesting things...the base of our fireplace is a triangle - I'm kind of surprised by this for some reason. I found some dried up cat (or Opossum or Raccoon?) feces, and I found a hell of a lot of junk.

What I did not expect to find greeted me shortly after finding the spot I was going to attach the plywood. I laid down on my back and was facing up so I could screen the board in place and I noticed a little spider a few inches to the right of the board. It was very well lit and I noticed that it had a few little red dots on its back, oh and some of the dots actually made an hourglass! I quickly determined that it was a black widow (I'm a bit of an arachnophobe, so I know my species), but it was a bit more brown than I had expected, but I'm sure it was one.

The first thing I thought was...hmm, I should kill it since it's about eighteen inches away from my face. So I took my board and jammed it up at him, but I missed, he was in a little crevice, so I think I just irritated him more than anything else. He moved around a little bit, but didn't come out much further...thank god. I decided that I wanted to just get this over with, so I quickly screwed the board in place and got the hell out of there.

A short time later our neighbor stopped by and I mentioned that I had just been in the basement and saw what I thought was a black widow. He quickly mentioned, oh yeah, I've seen a lot of them out here, and you know it's surprising, because the type you find in Washington tend to be more brown! That's when I knew it was my arch-nemesis.

Anyway, I didn't take a photo while I was doing there - should have, but then again, I didn't want to be down there, nor do I really want to remember it.