Not To Spread Panic . . .

. . . But I've been doing a little research into this whole deadly-spiders-under-the-house thing.
The general response at work has been along the lines of "calm down" and "I really think booking a hotel room is a little overkill" and "I'm sure that you can't actually hear them through the floor" and "why are you breathing like that?", but seriously, there are many spiders living under my house right now.
The whole substructure of the Pr3++yG33kyTh1ng Worldwide Headquarters and Remote Poisonous Creature Research Center and Panic Distribution Hub is crawling with tiny spiders which skitter around looking for human flesh to melt.
My panic is entirely justified. If there is a level of panic which qualifies as "reasonable" then that is what I have.
It isn't like they don't bite people.
It isn't like the natural habitat in the display for the animal at the Houston Museum of Natural Science isn't a boot.
Had I not developed the habit from living in scorpion country of banging my soles together before putting on my shoes I would no doubt already be dead.
As horrible as these little beasts are, they are no Phoneutria nigriventer, to be sure, but if it were you can be certain I'd have already attempted to enact my "OMG KILL IT! KILL IT WITH FIRE!" plan.
That spider regularly travels in bunches of bananas (to which I am thankfully allergic), is released in the gardens at London hospitals and cannot be killed by freezing, boiling or microwaving. It is uncertain that they can be killed at all in fact and probably exist as immortal, remorseless killing machines who want to feed on our pre-digested internal workings. (citation needed)
Even the brown recluse is resistant to pesticide fogs as the spider tends to cling to the corners of the woodwork. Killing the prey insects and starving them out is also impossible, as recent studies show that the brown recluse prefers to dine on dead insects, anyway. Fogging creates a buffet for them, an act of kindness which is returned by the delivery of oozing wounds.
I'm not sure I'm that into the whole "infinite splendor of nature" business, to be honest. Normally, I'm a live-and-let-live kind of geek.
I should not be pricing gas cans, volume discounts on liquid soap, and bundles of rags on the internets, yet that is what I find myself doing with a good bit of my evenings lately.
The sink in the kitchen works splendidly, though.