Spiders!

I am at my parents' house with my mother. It looks the way it did before the last twenty years of renovations. We have just finished putting something heavy away in Mom and Dad's room, and are about to head back to the kitchen. We still have to cook something before the guys get home.

Mom mentions that there have been more spiders around than usual lately, and I should watch out for them. When I open the door to leave the room, there in the hallway is one as big as a cat. It looks like a fat black garden spider, except for its size.

I shut the door.

Mom asks what's wrong, and I tell her about the spider. She is highly allergic to spider bites anyway, and I am sure that one this big would kill her. She asks if I can step on it, and I tell her how big it is.

In the closet, there is a huge can of bug spray, as long as my arm. Instead of a button to press, there's a pump in the back of it, like the old fashioned kind people used to use in their gardens. I grab that, and make Mom move away from the door. She is theorizing that the spider must have come up from the basement, as if it's normal for a spider that big to be anywhere in our house.

I hold the handle in one hand, and open the door with the other. The spider, which is in the same position it was the last time, twitches but does not do anything else. I swing the can up into position with the one hand, and grab a handle on its side (that was not there before) to aim it at the spider.

The spider turns to face me, and I blast it with the spray. It backs away. I advance, and spray again. The spider curls up on its back with its feet turned in. I motion mom to come out into the hallway.

I carefully approach the spider. It looks acid-burned, but nothing else the spray has hit does. I kick it, and it goes bouncing down the hall, without responding in any way. It is dead.

I turn to tell Mom the spider is dead, and see another huge spider in the corner over the door to the bedroom. Quickly, I grab her arm and draw her around behind me. I spray that spider, and it falls to the floor. It has yellow stripes, like a tomato spider. Its front legs fly up in the air, and it raises itself into a defensive position.

I spray it again, and it backs into the corner. It seems to be trying to use its front legs to wipe off the spray.

Mom and I back up, until we are standing in front of the doorway to the hall to my room, where there seem to be more huge spiders of various kinds. They are all over. We realize we need to get out of the house. I have chills. I'm really creeped out by spiders, but I'm more afraid one of them is going to bite my Mom.

I give the giant tomato spider one more shot with the spray, then pull Mom down the hallway toward the kitchen. There aren't any spiders in this hallway, but as we pass the bathroom, we can see an enormous wood spider sitting in the bathtub. Its legs hang over the sides. It twitches as we move past. As we pass the living room door, I see that the room is full of webs. There are at least seven spiders in there, and one of them is all red. Another looks like it might be a black widow, but I can't see its underside. We move into the kitchen, and I spray the walls and floor behind me in hopes that it will keep them from following. Oddly, no matter how much I use, the can continues to feel heavy and liquid inside it keeps sloshing around, so I'm not worried about running out.

In the kitchen, there are just as many spiders as in the living room, but they are all off to one side. There is at least a six foot buffer between us and the nearest web. Just in case, I spritz a little of whatever is in the can in that direction, hoping to deter them from coming any closer to us. The nearest spider retreats to the far side of its web and puts its legs up. At the same time, I hear a scrabbling sound behind us.

The big wood spider has climbed out of the tub, and I recognize the markings. It's not a wood spider, it's a wolf spider! Huge, dripping fangs hang down in front of its face. This is a hunter, and it has heard, or felt, our footsteps. It has stepped in the spray, and is sliding around on injured legs, but that won't stop it from coming after us. I spray a bunch in its direction, and yell for Mom to go out the door. She steps into the family room with me on her heels. I look over and see three fat jumping spiders across the room from us. Grabbing the door, I throw it open. We're going to be ok . We can get outside and shut the door, and they won't be able to get us. We can call an exterminator from someone else's house. I spray again behind me as I hear the scrabbling noise get closer, and then one of the jumping spiders jumps across the room at us. I spray it, too, and it jumps sideways onto the wolf spider. The wolf spider bites it, and Mom goes out the door into the sunlit and fortunately empty back yard. I turn to follow her, and hear a sucking sound behind me. I realize that the wolf spider is eating the jumping spider. A second jumping spider leaps onto it and attacks it, then springs backward as it gets burned by the poison that is now covering it. I step out the door and pull it closed.

Mom and I run to the middle of the yard, look up, and see her renters standing on top of the family room roof. There is a spider between them and the only way down - the tall, narrow UHF antenna tower mounted into the sidewalk below. It's stalking them, circling around to try for an advantageous angle from which to strike. I yell for the mother, and throw her the spray. She catches it and sprays the spider, then tosses it back to me. She pulls her daughter onto her back, piggy-back style, and climbs down the antenna. The girl's leg is swollen, bruised, and bleeding.

I woke up before I could speak, and immediately felt like I had to go back and let them know what to do. I had thought I'd tell them to go get the girl to the hospital, and I'd wait in the yard with the spray for Dad and my brother, so they wouldn't go into the house. When they got there, we'd go to the neighbors' and call for help. At first, I felt worried because I wasn't there to help any more, but it only took moments to let go of the dream. I have some variation of the giant spider dream near the end of every summer, when the spiders start coming indoors because of the weather. My mother really is allergic to spider bites. Her allergy is severe and can be life-threatening. At Mom and Dad's house, spiders aren't allowed to be there. When we find them, we kill them. Mom even uses a repellent spray around the house and in the basement to cut down on the number of them that come in. Also, they don't have renters any more, and haven't since around 1982. The girl in the dream is my age, but in the dream I was an adult just as in real life, while she was about a 4th grader, the age she was when I last saw her before she and her mother moved away.

I am glad we live in a northern state, outside of the brown recluse area. I'm sure if we had those to worry about, this dream would be so much worse!