I live in the wilds of the Ozark Mountains. To get to my house you have to travel over five miles of pitted, rutted, washed-out, tire-slashing dirt road. That’s after you’ve made the 50 mile journey from the nearest town that boasts a stoplight.
I like the seclusion. I like the beauty of the woods and the mountains. I like the silence and the wide open sky at night. I like to hear the frogs in the pond and the coyotes in the woods.
I like to be able to wander around my yard dressed like a hobo or a hooker and not worry that people will see me. I like to be able to puke outside when I’m sick because I don’t approve of putting my face close to a toilet. I like to turn my music up really loud and sing even louder.
I even like watching the wildlife. From a distance.
I do not like any living creature to be in my house without my express invitation.
© Copyright Abactus and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence
Tolerable Inside The House:
1. My kids.
2. My husband.
3. My cat.
4. My ferret (although he’s pushing his luck).
Tolerable Outside The House:
1. Birds.
2. Deer.
3. Cows.
4. Horses.
5. Squirrels (although those sneaky bastards bear watching).
6. Anything else that doesn’t try to come in my house.
INTOLERABLE IN MY HOUSE:
1. Your kids.
2. Probably your husband.
3. Maybe you, depending.
4. Snakes.
5. Scorpions.
6. Slimy things I can’t think of the name? Right, slugs.
7. Spiders.
8. Mice.
9. Birds.
That last list may actually be longer.
You probably think I’m overreacting.
I’m thinking that houses just aren’t built like they used to be.
Obviously, I’ve written about my horror upon encountering uninvited guests. I’m beginning to think this is some kind of hang-up of mine; like arachnophobia, only it’s all-living-thingophobia. Or something.
Anyway, yesterday I was getting ready to take a bath. My bathroom has a walk-in closet, so while the water was running, I was looking for something that might fit me.
I found a big plastic tub (sealed, mind you) labeled “summer clothes.” I was thrilled to find some shorts that looked like they would work, but I wanted to be sure before I washed them, so I tried them on and looked in the floor length mirror.
They were a little tight, but I was confident that with hard work and a healthy diet luck they’d be fitting better in no time.
I was smiling at myself in the mirror when I saw it.
It crawled out of the waistband of the shorts and down the front as I stared, paralyzed in horror.
It had gone the length of the shorts and was headed toward my bare leg when I finally sprang into action.
By “sprang into action” I mean “threw my hands up in the air, screamed, jumped around frantically, and ripped the shorts off.”
I saw it scamper under the bathroom door and into my bedroom, which I COULD NOT ALLOW. I threw the door open, grabbed the first thing to hand (black Converse), and began tearing my room apart to find the dirty creep who sneaked into my pants.
I didn’t catch him insomuch as he caught himself. In his haste to escape the swift justice of my Chuck Taylor, he ran right onto a glue trap.
Which was when I stood up, triumphantly wielding my shoe of destruction, and realized that I was standing directly in front of the large, wide open windows in my bedroom. Completely naked.
Do you live in a bubble or wish you did? Are you like me or do you keep creepy-crawlies as pets? *shudders*
We Don't Chew Glass 
May 8th, 2015 at 3:39 am
Oh my god, I felt so sick reading your description of what happened. I freak out when they’re a couple of feet from me, so on me would be a disaster. I walked into the kitchen last week and spotted a spider on the floor, I shrieked and ran into the living room, totally unable to talk through the shaking and tears. Luckily my hero was there to call me a wuss and go kill it for me.
My lists are pretty much the same as yours, though we’re in the process of finding a ferret to join the household!
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May 8th, 2015 at 8:00 am
Unfortunately (or fortunately, since I was naked) no one was home to assist me.
Ferrets are good. They smell, but I’ve found with mine that it’s his freaking PEE that stinks the worst. And he pees and poops constantly. Way more than my cat, and makes no attempt to hide it.
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May 8th, 2015 at 9:15 am
In my case it would have been fortunate to have no-one around if I was naked 😉 it would have taken a LOT of nerve for me to kill it myself.
With ferrets having their scent glands removed helps but they’re still smelly, they are gorgeous and fun though, so it’s well worth it.
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May 8th, 2015 at 5:16 am
I think jumping around and screaming while wielding a Converse is a perfectly normal reaction. Good thing you live where you do, deer/birds/cows/horses don’t care so much if they see you naked.
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May 8th, 2015 at 8:01 am
Right?! That’s exactly what I thought!
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May 8th, 2015 at 5:25 am
Oh god..this is like a horror story. Once, many years ago, my first husband and I lived in a shitty apartment. We had monster sized cockroaches. One morning I put my bathrobe on after my shower and felt something scratching the back of my neck.
Yep. huge mutant cockroach. I still get the shudders thinking about it.
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May 8th, 2015 at 8:02 am
Eeeek! I just hate the creepy crawlies! Why must they touch us? NO TOUCHING!
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May 8th, 2015 at 7:18 am
I try to tolerate the smaller spiders because I know they’ll eat the bugs I really don’t like, but I think if something crawled out of my pants I’d have a fucking heart attack. And for what it’s worth, we live smack ass in the middle of the ‘burbs and Josh walks upstairs to take his shower after work buck naked every day.
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May 8th, 2015 at 8:04 am
Yeah, like the little ones you can barely see cause they are so skinny? I don’t know what they are called. My husband calls them cob spiders, but he can’t be trusted.
I was thinking about it crawling OUT of my pants and had the HORRIBLE thought that it could have STAYED IN MY PANTS.
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May 8th, 2015 at 8:11 am
YUCKY!!!
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May 8th, 2015 at 7:44 am
Hold on. Aren’t ferrets and cats supposed to be doing some of this dirty work?
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May 8th, 2015 at 8:06 am
I KNOW, RIGHT? They are lazy assholes. They do not do ANYTHING around here, even when I asked the ferret to please, please keep the snakes out. Aren’t ferrets like tiny mongooses? (mongeese?)
I thought of you when I wrote this, seeing as how you have an affinity for small creatures.
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May 8th, 2015 at 10:16 am
Considering what you have been through, I felt it wouldn’t me appropriate to expound on my pro-rodent (prodent) beliefs.
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May 13th, 2015 at 6:19 am
Prodent! Good one. I have GOT to catch up on my blog reading, especially yours!
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May 13th, 2015 at 8:19 am
Yay! This week I talk about a time I almost got killed! (Spoiler alert: I didn’t get killed.)
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May 8th, 2015 at 8:46 am
But glue traps are nasty things… 😦 Also, snakes are excellent at keeping down mice and frogs, while spiders are useful for flies. I don’t have any snakes in my house, and our mice have evolved to the point that they laugh hysterically at the traps Himself sets and then invite their friends over for a snack. However, I do permit spiders, so long as they don’t get too messy.
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May 13th, 2015 at 6:18 am
See, I look at this the other way. Flies attract spiders. Spiders and bugs attract frogs. Mice and frogs attract snakes. Snakes get in my house. I had never heard of a glue trap, much less used one, until the snake problem. Now I couldn’t live here without them.
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May 8th, 2015 at 9:06 pm
Omg i totally get this! love your blog so hysterical and relatable. lol on the “your kids ” on the not in my house. I get it
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May 13th, 2015 at 6:20 am
Thanks Laurie! I appreciate that. After I post something I generally think it is complete crap. So it’s nice to hear that someone likes it!
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May 9th, 2015 at 8:45 am
I live in a back of beyond place too, well,not really when I think about yours! I don’t have any neighbours who can see in the window though. I often wander through the house naked after my shower, wondering where my clothes might be that I want to wear. This works really well, until a delivery driver comes round to the kitchen window…..
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May 13th, 2015 at 6:22 am
Right?! Fortunately for me, our house is situated so that the back door faces the driveway…not really sure why and I don’t like it usually, but in the case of nudity it does come in handy as the windows where I am most likely to be naked are on the front.
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May 9th, 2015 at 6:36 pm
Is this a mouse we’re talking about? (I don’t see where you stated exactly what this critter was). Anyway, the good news is that your shorts must not be all that tight if said critter could crawl up and out of the waist band. Yay?
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May 13th, 2015 at 6:24 am
Yay, lol! No, it wasn’t a mouse–I CANNOT imagine that. I think I would have just passed out cold. It was a spider. A creepy, scary, crawly, sneaky spider.
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June 9th, 2015 at 12:22 pm
I was lost too. I thought spider, but after reading the comments I thought it might be a snake. My husband told me that we have a 4 foot king snake living behind our fence. I told him to please leave it there as he often likes to bring nature indoors to visit and show our kids. I’m not down with that! Last summer it was legless lizards!
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June 15th, 2015 at 11:05 am
A SNAKE IN MY PANTS?! AmberLynn, I would’ve just died then and there.
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May 11th, 2015 at 1:23 pm
I live in a second floor apartment in the city and we get just as many unwelcome visitors in our home, if not more, than I’ve ever experienced in the country. I keep finding bloody spiders everywhere; as soon as I remove one, another takes its place.
And then there are the mice. They’re a problem throughout the building. We haven’t had one (that we know of) in our unit since we put all our dry goods in plastic containers and caught the two that had been snacking on hubby’s cereal via a hole they chewed in the box, but before that I remember one evening where I caught movement out of the corner of my eye and turned to see an obese mouse sitting out in the open on our living room carpet, gnawing on a stolen Cheerio as bold as brass.
If we get any more I may just have to overrule the building’s No Pets policy and get a secret cat like everyone else.
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May 13th, 2015 at 6:26 am
I’ve heard that about apartments in cities, but I’ve never lived in one myself. I hope if you do get a cat that it is more helpful than mine. She attacks nonexistent enemies but completely ignores the real bad guys. Aren’t the apartment people supposed to spray or something? I would think it would be really hard to keep them out of your space if they were in the apartments surrounding you.
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May 13th, 2015 at 10:49 am
We did a pretty good job of plugging all the holes we could find where they might be getting in. So far, no new rodent friends.
I have, however, had to evict a plethora of spiders within the last couple of days.
I hope our future Secret Agent Cat has a taste for arachnids.
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May 11th, 2015 at 8:51 pm
Ohhh…I hate creepy-crawlies of any type. Even when I’m attempting to bash in their itty-bitty heads with a broom or shoe, I scream the high-pitched girly scream until I know they are dead (and sometimes even after if they are particularly juicy and I have to clean up the mess). Having them ON me? That would induce no end of terror.
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May 13th, 2015 at 6:28 am
Jana, it was terrible. Watching it in the mirror was like…I don’t even know. And just think–I wasn’t wearing anything under the shorts (bout to get in the bath) SO WHAT IF IT HAD DECIDED TO STAY?? Oh my god, I just die.
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May 13th, 2015 at 6:13 pm
They DO like dark crevices! You dodged a bullet there!
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May 13th, 2015 at 6:43 pm
OHMYGODIKNOW! *shudders forever*
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May 12th, 2015 at 5:07 pm
KILL.
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May 13th, 2015 at 6:32 am
We see eye to eye on this. Reminds me of another post–I can’t remember which one–that you shared on Twitter and one of your followers berated us for being cruel. We are MURDERERS! It must be the red hair. (Mine’s only a reddish tint, nothing like *your* gorgeous color, so I might be slightly less murderey than you.)
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May 21st, 2015 at 10:02 am
I was blessed with the Scottish farmer, not scared of anything gene. So I’ve become a bit of a Buddhist, all God’s creatures blah blah blah. Except toads. They’re disgusting. They should all be killed.
Looking forward to reading more of your blog!
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May 22nd, 2015 at 3:20 pm
Thanks! That is so funny – all God’s creatures *except* toads!
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September 4th, 2015 at 1:10 pm
Funny enough I have a story. I was in school, and working in that school, during a break, they had exterminators in to bomb the place (wish it had been a real bomb). I heard two students talking right outside of my office corral (weird set of offices) and I see a GIANT SPIDER, they’re all like “oh they’re harmless!!” This fucker is as big as a half dollar piece, and I was like oh hell no, kill it! This god forsaken bleeding heart said no and nudged it with her shoe to get him to move. NOPE. He not only moved, he did so at lightening speed, DIRECTLY AT ME. Then…the fun started. We lost the spider. I’m jumping around howling in a totally quiet building, our maintenance man comes to see what the problem is (and of course he’s a hunk, funny and incredibly nice, you know…) while I’m screeching and can’t find it, half way to ripping my scrubs off (you know the loose pants that absolutely anything could hide in) so I FLIP my clogs off of my feet and start undoing my pants and they said “I FOUND IT!” In my shoe. It got smashed in my shoe. I can’t think of this without needing a Xanax and a shower. -_-
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September 4th, 2015 at 3:37 pm
Shit, now I need a Xanax! In your shoe! Omg. So glad you took your shoe off. Also that you didn’t have to strip.
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