Addendum to the saga of the Laundry Spider

Sometimes I think a post just begs for a follow-up - this one is no exception to that rule.  

After the Sweetpea hurled the hapless Laundry Spider into the bushes, having rescued his child and woman from the ravages of the beast, we did not see the creature for some time.

I have off-loaded several (thousand) baskets of laundry, each time shaking out the pants and jackets in the off-chance that the spider has made his way back into the house again from his exile in the nether reaches of the garden.  Yet for a while, we have been ominously spider-free.

Until last week.  


I was walking into the house, carrying the large tub of laundry.  I know what you are thinking - there is the spider in the basket as usual.  Well, you would be wrong.  As I was walking into the house, the cat rushed past me from its hunting safari in the garden.  He was acting very suspicious, darting around and behaving in a generally sneaky way.  I followed him into the house and in the middle of the lounge carpet, he spat out his ill-gotten gains.  It was the Laundry Spider.  Or if it was not him, it was his twin brother.  Before we could stop him (we have grown quite fond of the spider in the loosest possible terms), the cat pounced on him and ate him down to the last wriggly scrap.

I have faith in that spider's ability to bounce back from all sorts of adversity, but I have a feeling that even he, with his numerous lives and sheer dogged tenacity, will have a hard time returning from this ultimate exile.

The saga of the laundry spider

For the past few months, it seems as though our lives have been dogged by a certain spider.  Now, I am not saying that I believe that it is the same spider every time, but even I have to admit, it is starting to look suspicious.  I have started calling it the "laundry spider".

I know that it is "spider time" here at the moment, but it certainly seems uncanny that every time I bring in a load of laundry off the line, no matter how carefully shaken out, by the time I get it into the lounge, there is a rather large spider sitting in it, waiting to jump out at me. (Okay, this being NZ, it cannot count as large really.  In other countries, it would be classed as medium-ish to small.  But I have to admit, I have gone past the days where we used to catch spiders in a two-liter ice-cream tub and not manage to fit in the legs. Suffice it to say that I now believe that our "laundry spider" is large.)  I also find it extremely inconvenient and insensitive that the spider only makes an appearance when I bring in the washing, and not when the Sweetpea does (who finds this whole scenario very amusing).  I have been known to throw an entire set of pajamas off the balcony on discovery of said laundry spider.  And the weird thing is that I actually don't mind spiders, and will go out of my way to trap them under a glass and take them outside.  It all just seems a bit rude.

Worse is when the laundry spider bides his time (only a he could be so calculatingly annoying), sitting inside someone's shirt or undies until a suitably inopportune moment to make his appearance.  Take the other day, for example.  I had strapped all three kiddies into their car seats when Paddy mentioned that he was getting cold.  I raced into the house and grabbed a freshly-laundered fleecy jacket out of the basket and, because we were late, put it over his head and arms without getting him out of his car seat, just releasing the belt.   I fastened him in again, climbed into my own seat, did up my belt, and it was at that moment that the laundry spider chose to make his presence felt.  Obviously disturbed from the lovely nest he had made inside the sleeve of Paddy's jacket, he crawled out of the arm hole and began dancing around tauntingly on Paddy's hand.  The boy's reaction was not what you could call manly stoicism in the face of peril.  How ironic that a boy dressed as Spiderman should have such a reaction to his namesake.  Long story short, there was a lot of chaos that ensued.  In the heat of the moment, I could not release myself from my seat quickly enough, and neither could Paddy, and the spider ran rings around the both of us.  It took the manly intervention of the Sweetpea to eventually save the lot of us (after he recovered from his hysterical laughter), trapping the spider under a glass and then throwing him back into the garden.

To wreak havoc in another load of laundry, another day.