What’s your phobia?

All of metformin side effects 500mg us fear something – maybe one or two things. Some people fear heights, water, enclosed places, frogs etc. If you google it, there is  this looooooooong list of phobias- from A to Z! Do you know there is this thing called Cacophobia – which is fear of ugliness.  LOL. So, okay I have arachnophobia. I know most spiders are harmless but I have to admit, I really am a little Miss Muffet. How arachnophobic am I? I’m terrified at the sight of spiders.  One look at a tiny spider makes me shiver. Even those tiny “jumpers” and daddy-long-legs freak me out.  How much more if I see a tarantula? Yikes, I will surely faint! :-S Well, I naturally hate spiders. No bad experience, no nothing like that. I just don’t like them at all. I don’t like plastic spiders either. :p

What I do when I see spiders? I whack them with rolled news papers, slippers or anything I can get hold of. I like my room sealed. No holes, no vents, no cracks on the walls. I get squeamish at the idea of kids playing with spiders. I don’t like cobwebs around the house. As much as possible I keep my place clean. Like squeaky clean. I don’t like people teasing me with spiders. I whack them with newspaper too or sometimes with a firewood

Have you seen a big, dark brown one around your house that sort of looks like the brown recluse spider? Its body is as the size of your thumb, with long legs and sometimes carrying a sack of white cottony whatever thingy, probably her eggs. Now that one really can freak me out big time and can definitely scare the hell out of me. Armed with a broom and a huge can of bug spray, I think a hundred times on how to attack it. Seriously, it’s like I’m making my own battle plan. I call reinforcement if I have to. Well, okay so I usually call for help first.

So glad I found this:

SPIDERS 101: Keeping spiders at bay

OK — so you’ve tossed the spiders out of the house. Now how do you keep them out?

Turns out it’s not so easy.

“There are no sure, long-lasting control measures for spiders,” Vetter writes. The best defense, experts say, is to create a home that’s not hospitable to them. To that end, there are several things you can do:

1. Close the door. “Try to close all of those openings that a spider can come into,” Zack says. Walk around your house and think like a spider: Where could you slink in? Spiders frequently use the door — or the gaps around one, Brown says. “If you can see daylight around the door, it’s not a good seal.” Check whether screens are repaired.

Now look more closely around the house’s base. Air vents should be covered in fine hardware mesh that allows for circulation but keeps spiders out. Seal cracks in the foundation. Weep holes around pipes should be stuffed with steel wool, caulked or filled with foam. “That really will go a long way toward solving your problems,” Zack says.

2. Pull it back. Everybody likes a smooth path toward home. That goes for spiders, too. Deny them that. Trim shrubs adjacent to your house. That “will discourage spiders from first taking up residence near the structure and then moving indoors,” according to the University of California. And look up: Cut back tree limbs several feet from the house, Brown says. (That’s also good advice for keeping squirrels at bay.)

3. Clean up your act. “Both inside and outside, you want to just eliminate as much debris as possible,” Zack says. Why? Spiders generally don’t like wide open spaces. They prefer to hole up in dark little nooks and crannies. Behind stuff. In between things. Under clutter. “Human beings are very, very good at creating ideal situations for critters that were intended to live out of doors,” Zack says. When you remove hiding places, you make a place less inviting.

Outside: If possible, get rid of woodpiles (especially next to the house), tin cans, piles of cardboard and plywood. “Those are perfect places for insects,” Zack says.

Inside: Don’t make a pile of shoes in the closet — that’s practically an apartment complex for a spider — but instead hang them on one of those back-of-door shoe hangers, Zack says. Keep items from accumulating on the floor, including books. “Don’t allow things to build up,” Zack says. “Those are great habitats for spiders.

“A little organization will go a long way to helping to eliminate the problem.”

4. Take away their food. You can’t take away everything spiders dine on, experts say. But you can remove some of the obvious insects that make your home a supermarket. For instance, some outdoor lighting attracts insects, which then attracts spiders. “If possible, keep lighting fixtures off structures and away from windows and doorways,” says the University of California.

Next, figure out whether you have insects in the house, from flies to earwigs to fruit flies — and determine how to reduce their numbers, Brown says. If you have a lot of flies inside, you can reduce your spider population by fixing your screens, covering food and taking out the trash more often.

5. Take the fight to the bedroom. Small children and infants can be more vulnerable to the bites of spiders. And small children also spend more time in bed, where spiders seem to like to hang out. (Some brown recluse bites occur when a sleeping person rolls over on one, trapping it, says the University of California.) If you’re nervous about spiders in the bedroom, try these simple strategies:

• Move your the bed away from the wall.
• Remove any skirts or ruffles that would give a spider an easy ladder up onto the top of the bed.
• Put sticky traps beneath the legs of the bed; they will stop spiders from reaching the legs.
• If really nervous, hang a mosquito net over the bed.
• Don’t store items under the bed; keep it clean and empty.
• Finally, don’t leave clothes and shoes on the floor.

6. Spray anyway? “If you are seriously afraid, and you do have problems with spiders — say you have an old home and you can’t close all of those openings — then I would talk to a reputable pest-control operator,” Zack says. A company can put perimeter sprays around the house — barriers that the spiders can’t cross, at least until the sprays wear off with time and weather.

Inside, the pros have “sorptive dusts containing amorphous silica gel (silica aerogel) and pyrethrins,” according to the University of California. Those dust particles dry out the spiders and insects that they touch. “When applied as a dustlike film and left in place, a sorptive dust provides permanent protection against spiders. The dust is most advantageously used in cracks and crevices and in attics, wall voids and other enclosed or unused places.

Do you think I like spiderman? Hmn, let’s just say I’m a batman kind of person.

What’s your phobia? Share it with me or better yet, find your Phobia here!

“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear.”
— H.P. Lovecraft