There are lots of things I love about my German wife — she’s smart, funny and beautiful, to name a few — but she also has this one particular characteristic which warms my heart every time I see it: Whenever she sees a spider in our home, she grabs the nearest shoe, swings it up over her head and brings it down with ten thousand times the crushing force necessary to end its life.
You see, when it comes to executing spiders, my wife tends not to fuck around. Oh, she’s not proud of herself for killing them — she knows they’re mostly harmless and she should probably just let them outside instead — but nevertheless, her knee-jerk reaction to seeing a spider is murder, and I just love that about her.
My wife is actually a very gentle person, and she abhors violence. That’s why the spider can’t be too big. If it’s huge, she starts to see it as “more of an animal,” and can’t bring herself to kill it. Me? I’m the exact opposite. I believe in spider karma, so I’ll readily share my office with a tiny little wall crawler. I’ll even talk to it. Name it Sebastián or something. But if I see some giant, hairy bastard come swaggering in, I’ll jump up and stomp that bitch straight back to hell.
I actually wrote a blog post about this very subject last year: American Expat in Germany Nearly Killed by an Acorn, Vents His Shame upon the Biggest Spider in the Universe. The spider in that story was bigger than a €1 euro coin. But just a few nights ago, my wife and I were sitting in the kitchen when an even bigger spider ran across the floor. This one was the size of an American silver dollar:
Now, we were mid-sentence when she saw it, so you can imagine my alarm when her eyes went wide and suddenly darted down and to the left. Oh great, I thought to myself, I get to spend my Friday night chasing a plague rat out of the house.
I was actually sort of relieved when I saw it was just a spider, but oh my Christ was it huge. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any spare change to toss at the beast for comparison, so you can’t appreciate its size from the video I recorded, but you can bare witness to its execution.
Check it out, and have a great week everyone!
— OGM
Oh God, My Wife Is German. 
Ok, first that spider’s name was Charlotte. Second, do you not know that you NEVER put any appendage near a dead spider. It can and WILL leap to life and suck your life blood away, or more likely it will shoot poison straight into your eye causing instant paralysis so that you can do nothing but watch as it sucks your life force away (well, that is what my neurotic fear of spiders tells me anyway).
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You’re right. Risky move on my part.
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Urgh, we get some big spiders here in South Africa – the shoe method only works with the little ones – so if there’s a giant arachnid indoors, use a broom or vacuum cleaner, if it’s outdoors (but threatening to come indoors) the hose is your best option.
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