I have noticed in the past few months, that Shelby has the gift to sniff out and spot spiders. Considering that both myself and my fearless mate both perform a new-age "scared out of our pants because a bug one-millionth our size could possibly crawl all over us" dance when we see them. Shelby proves to be one of our greatest assets for the fight against the enormous tiny spiders that inhabit our home.

The other night, we had just arrived home from our trip and Shelby spotted a dime-size black hairy spider in the corner of our ceiling going into the kitchen. She sat down and continued to watch it until Hugh and I could got our act together to get our make-shift spider killer weapon. Now, let me take you through this. I am not calm in these sort of situations. I usually do a half jump up and down squealing dance number while Hugh frantically tries to form some sort of make-shift weapon to defend us from the horrendously large fuzzy spider that is rearing back ready to strike.

Shelby moves out of the way as she notices that we both have calmed down enough to focus on smacking the spider with our wooden spoon wrapped in a paper towel. The problem with this method, is that as we strike the spider feels a rush of wind coming at him. Probably enough to scare him into falling. Well of course he did. He fell onto the black blanket that covers Shelby's crate. Of course it's black and he is black and now we can't find him. This sends me to an even MORE manic animated jumping squealing spider dance. All I'm thinking of is that stupid statistic I heard in High school. You know the one, that you swallow an average of 9 spiders a year in your sleep. Need I say more.

In a panic we decide to get the vacuum. I spot the spider on the blanket and clearly he is pissed. We quickly vacuum him up. However, we can't get a confirmed "kill" on this one. I know I saw him get sucked up but there is always that one percent of failure I worry about.