The other night I was sitting on my sofa watching TV when a spider appeared on my ceiling.

I am absolutely terrified of spiders, a fear which was lived out to its fullest one night in 1998 when after being awakened by a tickling on my leg that wouldn’t go away, I pulled back the covers to find dozens of spiders in my bed. Needless to say, I soon moved out of that apartment.

I have lived in my current place for 6 years, and in all that time I have never seen a spider in my loft. In fact, other than the occasional wasp or housefly, I have never had a problem with bugs here. So now, faced with my greatest arch-nemesis on my ceiling, I found that I was grossly unprepared for the situation.

At 11 feet, my ceiling is far too high for me to smack it with a shoe. My Bug Vac™, which I have never needed since moving out of Johnson County, was packed away somewhere in storage. And I had absolutely no spray of any kind that was rated for the destruction of spiders.

I grabbed the only thing I did have in my arsenal, a can of Wasp & Hornet spray. I lined up my shot from a safe distance, pulled the trigger, and watched as the terrifying beast was drenched with the poison.

Now, I don’t know what I was expecting to happen, but it did not occur to me that the spider would start running as I did this. This resulted in me gasping and making a hasty retreat. After I regained my composure I re-entered the room and sprayed it again. This time it convulsed a few times, and dropped from the ceiling.

This is where my lack of planning truly became apparent, because it had not occurred to me that the spider would fall. I ran from the room screaming, much like the squirrel scene from Christmas Vacation.

I had to calm myself, though, because I did not know if the spider was alive or dead and I could not let it get away to scare me again later.

Looking up at the second spray pattern I realized that the spider most likely would have fallen on the coffee table. Unfortunately my coffee table was covered with books and papers from vacation planning, meaning plenty of hidden places it could be.

Each time I gingerly lifted a piece of paper I was filled with unbridled terror and made more sounds similar to those made in the above movie clip. Eventually the savage beast was found, on the floor, not quite dead but close enough to it to be safely destroyed and disposed of via a sufficiently large, thick wad of paper towels.

I pray to the gods that I go at least another 6 years before I see another spider in my home.