Monday, May 18, 2009

Did I Mention I'm An Arachnophobe?

Well, I am.

Do you remember last summer's little adventure with the black widow? If you're new you can find the posts on the sidebar under 'itsy, bitsy spider.'

Our new eye doctor here in Michigan — she's one of our sub neighbors. She doesn't kill spiders. I found that out when I was in the office to pick up my glasses and order the girls' contacts.

I spotted the spider. I thought I did my civic duty. Presumably the girls who worked there were trying to figure out who was going to kill it, and nobody wanted to use their own shoe.

Then they flicked it halfway across the little waiting area toward the door with a postcard with a bad aim towards me. Thank God it only made it halfway.

I moved.

My sub neighbor, the doctor, happened to walk out from the back, picks it up with a napkin and carries it outside to the grassy area. She seemed a little creeped out by how big it was, but it didn't stop her.

So last Friday morning when one of our smoke detectors on the third floor started going off, we changed the battery.

Through the course of the day, multiple false alarms, multiple resets, we find out that the battery is only the back-up power source. It's electrically powered. And of course every smoke detector from the basement to the third floor goes off every time that one does.

The online user's manual said that if you continue to get false alarms you should move it.

Excuse me, but the builder put this in about a year ago, and I'm thinking that moving a smoke detector attached electrically to who knows how many others is not really an option.

It gave us no other option.

So about 1 a.m. on Saturday morning when it went off again, I'd really had it. Hubby had already blown on it at my request, in case it was dusty. Because really, who's going to dust a smoke detector.

This time he takes a washcloth and wipes off the sensor. He finds nothing, except a spider walking around on the ceiling a couple feet away.

We kill spiders in our house.

And the alarm never went off again.


3 comments:

Mari said...

We kill them here too -especially when they set off the smoke detector! Funny story!

Betsy Brock said...

I can't believe that spider! Yes, we kill them, too! We know of some other people that gently help them outside. I guess we're just cruel! tee-hee!

Anonymous said...

aw. that's kind of creepy, that is that a spider was setting the alarms off!?!?! eek! We have cats for that very reason. Cats kill anything that crawls in our house, except our bdrm and main bthrm (these two places are off limits-cat free zones) but last night something was biting me in bed, I know because I felt it, but when I turned on the lights to look for it, there was nothing there! I'm thinking of letting the cats into the bdrm and bthrm once a month now!!!

 
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