Mommy the Brave!

This past Wednesday morning it was warm, sunny and beautiful when Pap came to get Izzy. I walked them out the truck, gave Izzy a kiss & hug and came back inside to finish getting ready for work. As I was closing the door behind me, the Lord told me to look up and I saw a spider hanging from my candelabra on my armoire. At first I was p.o'd because Clark and I had just cleaned our house from top to bottom last weekend, but then it hit me that it wasn't any old house spider. I turned on the overhead light and went to get some paper towels and a chair from the dining room. Standing in the chair, I stared at this spider trying to see if suspicions were true, and as it hung there suspended by a single thread of web I finally saw the red spot on her butt. She was a BLACK WIDOW, in my house, where my 18 mo. old baby had stood below her only minutes before! I was shaking so bad I could barely stand on the chair. A million thoughts were racing through my head; what if I hadn't seen her, what if she had bitten Izzy, what if she bites me, what if she gets away while I'm trying to kill her and is loose in my house? Finally, I thought I have got to pull myself together b/c if I don't-she will get away or bite me-I was shaking almost uncontrollably. I still had on flip flops from taking Izzy out and I took off the right one. Then, she started spinning some more of her web and I thought I better take off the other one too. I went at her with the right one first and she went CRAZY! She had to have been biting my flip flop-she was all over it like white on rice. Next, I knocked her off her web with my left flip flop, but she quickly climbed up on the toe. She couldn't have been more than 5 in from my hand. I took the right flop and mashed her into the left one! She was dead as a door nail, flat as a pancake, belly-up! *Shew* it was over, only I could NOT stop shaking. The thoughts of what could have happened were driving me crazy. How did she get in here in the first place? Where was she while we were cleaning Saturday? Why was she in the living room right out in the open and not outside in some weeds or a woodpile? Was she going to lay her egg sac? I had her in a paper towel after I had gotten her off my flip flop. I folded the paper towel over her and wrote on the outside what was on the inside. I knew that if I didn't keep her-Clark and Marshall would NEVER believe me. I could just hear them saying, oh you might have thought it was one, but it wasn't, it was probably a false widow. But I had proof, a DEAD black widow spider complete with a red butt and red spot on her belly-and I killed her all by myself!