I just couldn't do it.

We ordered pizza for dinner last night, and the delivery gal came to the back deck. As my wife was paying for it (my job when the delivery people come is to tackle the dog), the delivery gal said, "nice spider."

My wife looked where she was pointing and then screamed at the top of her lungs. Next to the sliding door was a HUGE garden spider. Sans legs, it must have been the diameter of a quarter. As the Pizza car drove madly away, she hysterically demanded I go out and kill it.

I am not afraid of spiders at all, and I have squished more than my fair share (there are indeed an inordinate number of spiders this year it seems), but this one was so big it just didn't seem right. If it lived long enough to get to that size, I would have felt guilty to snuff it just because my wife was having a heart attack.

I took two styrofoam cups and trapped it, then I carried it out to the shrubs away from the house (ignoring Dolores's screams of "FARTHER OUT!! FARTHER OUT!!") and let it go. It probably only has a few more weeks of life left anyways, but I felt a bit of satisfaction at the fact I managed not to kill it.

I must be getting old if a wee critter like a spider is now able to evoke sympathy from me.

In any event, I took picture of the beastie (above) before I let it go.

So Dolores and I are pulling weeds and doing some general cleaning around the yard as summer winds down.  She gets out the Ortho and starts to spray around the base of the house to prevent bugs and such from getting in.  I'm in the back of the house and she's in the front, and I hear a scream.

She yells for me, and when I meet up with her, she's lost her normal coffee-with-cream completion and is as pale as...well...me.   She chokes out the second worst name of invaders home owners fear the worst, "we have rats."

(The first is termites.)

She points a shaky finger at the slate water-catch under the eaves drain and tells me to pick it up.  I ask her what she saw under it, and she screams "JUST PICK IT UP, DAMMIT!!"

Hesitantly, I pick it up.  I have visions of a giant, black, greasy rat springing for my jugular the moment I expose it to daylight.  I toss the piece of stone to the side and leap back.

And I do see black fur--I concede that.  The black fur on the back of an absolutely terrified two inch long mole.

"IT'S A RAT!!" Dolores screams.

She proceeds to defend herself by pulling the trigger on the Ortho Max bottle at a rate that would do Chuck Conners as The Rifleman  proud.   Sadly, her aim is a tad wanting, and I find myself doused in enough chemicals that l think may mutate or otherwise make me develop superpowers sometime in the near future.

The poor little mole scurries away, terrified but otherwise unharmed.