(Air) Conditioning You To Handle Spiders

I fit in with much of the world’s population by being deathly afraid of spiders. I also fit in with much of the world’s population by owning a window AC unit for my room.

This air conditioner has stretchy panels on both sides that are meant to stretch out to block the rest of the space in the open window, since the weight of the open windowpane is what is holding the unit in place, and because you don’t want the open window letting in hot air or letting out cold air, of course.

My window is a little bit too wide to exactly fit the length of these stretchy panels, and one of the panels is also missing a screw that holds the very bottom of the panel in place. What this means is that, when the unit’s panels are fully stretched out to block the open window, there’s a very small gap that can let air and objects through.

I thought this would be a small problem, or maybe not a problem at all, so my fix was to simply put scotch tape over the opening to block insects and air from trying to get in. Could a mosquito possibly even find that gap, anyway? There was no way I would have to worry about things flying in, right?

Well, maybe not quite mosquitoes…

One day, I came into my room and walked over to the window to turn the AC on when I was greeted with the sight of a noticeably large spider trying to push its way through the tape barrier, through the gap, and into my house, for whatever reason. Probably to try and murder me, like any spider would, I’m sure.

While I saw that my tape barrier was adequate for keeping out a normal, yet large, spider, I still felt the immediate urge to eliminate the threat. I turned away, say, “Nope,” and made my way through the house.

As I walked through the living room, still repeating “nope” at random intervals, I made a beeline for the cabinet under the kitchen sink and found the most caustic and/or most toxic bug spray I could find and made my way back to the offending bug.

I walked into the room, said one final, “nope,” and then instantly started blasting the spider through the tape with the spray at almost point-blank range. The spray was actually so toxic that it began dissolving the flimsy tape, and the spider was very much dead by this point, but I no longer cared about the consequences of my actions until I could personally verify that this Hell-spawn was erased from the face of the earth.

After about a full 30 seconds of chemically power-washing my windowsill, I decided that the threat had been neutralized and started cleaning up the melted spider-tape-chemical ball by knocking it back out of the window from whence it came using a very long chopstick. I then proceeded to use the next ten minutes to put double-layer extra-strength duct tape on every single crevice that the window might have. Thankfully, I haven’t had a repeat incident since.

I get that spiders do good for us by keeping obnoxious flying insects in check… but I still can’t justify their existence.

They’re just too evil.