A couple days after doing all this Sean told me that he had gone out into the garage, and he saw what looked like a blackwidow spider under the car. Well, a week or two passes, and we are mostly working on his other house in Ahwatukee to fix it up and sell it, so we haven't been working around the house up here in Mesa much. Meanwhile, Sean orders the new engine from Japan to be dropped into the Honda, and we were waiting on the delivery of this thing (basically we are dropping a 170+ hp Integra engine into this little Honda- it will be smoken fast!). So the engine comes in, and we need to get into the garage and clear some space around the Honda to work in while we install this engine. So we go out there a couple days ago, and as soon as we walk out into the garage we are confronted with a nexus of nastiness.
Spiderwebs stretch from the Honda to the ceiling of the garage, the Honda has webs all over it- the only place I have ever seen this many webs is on corny Halloween displays. No joke! So we take a stick and knock down the webs, all the while Sean is telling me about the blackwidow he saw out there after we pushed it into the garage a few weeks earlier. When we make our way to the front of the Honda, we can see that this sucker is covered in webs, and hundreds... I mean hundreds of small baby blackwidow spiders were running over these webs. It was crazy! They looked like hundreds of little water dropplets. Sean jumped back and grimaced, and I asked him-
'Dude, got insecticide?'
So we dig out this bottle of crap, and we kill literally hundreds of these little blackwidow larva. It was pretty gross. They were all over though, so we were spraying all over the freaken place. Sean was wigging out. He didn't like the idea of these buggers being essentially 'inside' his home. He wanted to push the Honda back out into the driveway right away, but he didn't want to take a risk being bit. Where there are babies, there is a mother somewhere.
As I am looking over the car, in the front by the nexus of babies we had killed, I find the mother spider sitting in a really elaborate web system going from the bumper of the Honda down to the floor. It was a tight spot. I point it out to Sean, and we ponder on the best course of action to take. This was war, and we adopted the role of the 'great white hunters' very quickly. Spider warfare is something I am accustomed too- I feel I have earned my stripes in the field after many close calls and successive victories. If spiders have a most wanted terror-watch list- I feel my face would be on it. I am Osama-bin Simon of the spider world.
Sean is in favor of using his insecticide against the mother, but I argue that the mother isn't going to just fall over and die on the first spray like her babies. She will run up under the car when sprayed, and we will not have another chance at her. Essentially, we have to make our one shot count.
So I wander over to the section of the garage, which has the garden equipment in it. We had just trimmed back his mesquite tree in the front, lopping off some pretty big branches, and so we bought this sealant to spray over the tree where we chopped off branches. There was still stuff in the bottle, so I tell Sean we should use this sealant.
Sean didn't want to get it all over his garage, but when I argue that this stuff has the best chance of either killing or immobilizing on the first spray, Sean grabs it and readies himself for combat. Creeping up to the nexus, Sean shoots straight and the spider instantly falls. Sean sprays again, and the spider is essentially glued to the floor.
So we take out all the stuff which was in front of the Honda, knocked down the webs, kills the black widow which was still alive and stuck to the floor (!), then we push the Honda out into the driveway.
Considering we are planning to work on the Honda and put a new engine in it, we want to be sure there are no more of these little buggers around. I call my friend Mario in California, who keeps blackwidows as pets, and I ask him the likelihood of there being more in or on the Honda. He said their wouldn't be any near the front probably because females are pretty territorial around their young, but their could be some near the rear of the car. We decide it is best to tackle rooting out any other blackwidows at another time.
The next day we head out there to the Honda during the hot summer day to hunt for more blackwidows. We bought some heavy duty cleaner to spray under the hood of the Honda, and we shoot it in there then spray the whole thing down with water. While we are spraying the car down, Sean notices that the wiring harness under the hood had been chewed through- crazy shit! Turns out some mouse or rat was living in his engine for a time and chewed through some of the electrical stuff. Crazy! We couldn't find the rodent, but we found its shit and there was a trail of chewed wire.
So we spray down the whole car, and we spray down the wheels. While doing the rear wheel, Sean suddenly jumps back, and he bellows out an expletive! Sure enough, we found another blackwidow. He goes and grabs the tree sealant- the preferred method of stopping those suckers dead in their tracks. Now the blackwidow I am looking at is hanging in the spoke of the wheel and it is a big sucker, much bigger than that other mother we killed yesterday. Little did I know though, Sean was actually looking at another blackwidow which was further up the wheel near the wheel-well. So as he gets close to the wheel, he is really close to the one I am looking at. I am wondering to myself- What is he doing? Then he suddenly shoots the spray in a direction I didn't expect, and a blackwidow falls out of the wheel-well. Sean steps on it quickly, and he pronounces-
'Got that motherfer!'
I reply-
'Well that's one down.'
Sean's eyes about bulge out of his head and he says excitedly-
'What the hell are you talking about Simon?'
'Dude, you missed that big mama, in fact your hand was right next to her.'
Sean jumps back at that point, and he says- 'WTF are you talking about Sime? You're kidding right?'
I point out the big blackwidow, and Sean accuses-
'Why didn't you tell me I was that close?!'
'I thought you were going after that one- it is freaken huge- how could you miss it?'
After a little more arguing about like this, Sean takes the sealant and goes to work. We kill the big one, and we decide that is enough spider hunting for the day. The day we went to pick up the new motor, the truck we brought down there broke down. We were able to get the truck started though, and we later picked up the engine and brought it home. The Honda has fresh webs around the front of the sucker again, so we might need to buy another can of sealant by the time all this is over. We will not be taking a bolt off this damn car until we know for sure that it is rid of these pesky black arachnids. Crazy shit!