A camping we will go...for some reason

I have to admit, I didn't really understand the whole camping thing.

When I wed my beautiful bride, she wanted to leave our home and sleep on the ground under the trees wrapped in canvass.

I had been working hard for many years to prevent that sort of thing and now I was supposed to do it voluntarily.

Like I said, I didn't really get it, but because I was in love I readily agreed — and the cooler full of adult recreational beverages didn't hurt in convincing me either.

So off we went, leaving our lovely rented apartment behind so we could sleep on the ground like a wild critter.

The first thing I noticed about camping was how much work it was. You had to load everything you needed into a vehicle, drive to the campground, unpack everything, set up the tent, bedding, cooking utensils etc. only to reverse the whole process a few days later.

And don't even get me started on the insects, especially the eight-legged monsters that haunt my dreams when I am in my own bed, let alone sleeping in a sack of stuffed material on a thin layer of foam in the middle of bug central.

Camping actually goes back to biblical times. Moses did it for 40 years. It may not have been by choice, but he still spent four decades pitching a tent and looking for just the right fauna for personal use.

I get tired of camping after just a couple days.

And speaking of fauna for personal use: where the heck did they find fauna in the middle of a desert in the first place? And if there was no fauna, what did they use?

On second thought, maybe I don't want the answer.

Fortunately, provincial campgrounds have bathroom facilities of some sort and what a thrill it is to make a boom-boom in an outhouse.

The most distressing part of the outhouse was the aromatic essence of the structure. Outhouses have a special odiferous quality that just can’t be described without actually experiencing it.

But young love ruled the day, so camping became a regular part of our summers — wooden toilets and all.

The longer we were married, the more our camping evolved. We went from a small, three-person tent to a 10-person tent that was so large it had room for our queen-sized air mattress, baby playpen, luggage, a full basement and in-ground pool.

The tent of wonders eventually gave way to a tent trailer, and not just any tent trailer, the largest tent trailer ever built by the human race.

The thing was so big we dubbed it The Land Whale. With the wings out, it was 26 feet long. In the right light, it could be seen from space.

What an improvement it was. I was no longer a ground-dwelling barbarian, but had an actual bed to sleep in. Camping was still a lot of work, especially with three little ones, but the Land Whale made it a lot more bearable.

My favourite part of camping was sitting around the fire with those adult bevvies I was talking about while the kids slept quietly in their beds.

But it still took many years for me to really enjoy camping.

The change started when I saw how excited my children were to leave our home and head for the hills.

When my son was 18, he said he can't wait to go camping with us and his own family (when he has one).

In that moment, the importance of family camping became clear. Suddenly, I loved camping. What an awesome way to spend a weekend with the family.

Now, if we could just do something about those bugs.  

Copyright 2017, Darren Handschuh

Yes, I am a spider wimp

I'm man enough to admit it.

I'm not ashamed to admit I made a noise typically reserved for a small, frightened child before fleeing like I was on fire when it happened.

And I had every good reason to be scared, because it was scary.

It happens every spring and gets worse as the days get warmer and stretch into the summer months.

But with all the rain this year and the cooler weather, it really hasn't been that bad.

"It" is interactions of the spider kind.

I hate spiders. Not many things in this world scare me as much as an arachnid. Big, small, fat, skinny, you name it, if it's a spider I do not like it.

My most recent encounter with one of the eight-legged terrors was when I was working in my garage.

I grabbed a pair of coveralls I have hanging from a nail to do an oil change on my car.

For some reason, I shook the garment before putting it on, something I never do.

Call it the voice of God, dumb luck or some other glorious interaction of the divine kind, but when I shook it, a large spider fell out of a sleeve.

Eeeeek! does not even begin to describe how I felt. And this was no ordinary spider. This guy must have been on steroids because I have never seen one this big, this early in the year.

Sure, there are billions of little spiders roaming the area, and being the big, tough guy that I am, they hardly bother me, but this one was the size of a bagel.

It was so big, I could feel the ground vibrate as it fell from my coveralls and landed on the concrete.

OK, maybe the ground didn't vibrate, but I did pee a little and jumped 10 feet straight back as the black mass of doom raced for cover under a nearby cupboard.

It was at that moment, I knew I must take action, for if the monstrosity managed to find cover, I would likely never be able to enter my garage again knowing it was in there, watching, waiting for the right moment to pounce.

So, I summoned up all of my courage and sprang into action: I leapt across the room and smashed my foot down on the offending critter with such force my toes were numb for an hour; the impact of rubber sole hitting the smooth concrete was so loud it sounded like I had shot the spider instead of crushing it to death.

At least, I hoped I crushed it to death. I stood for second frantically looking around to see if the beast,which must have been some sort of Jurassic spider because of its sheer size, was embedded in the bottom of my shoe.

Slowly, I lifted my foot and to my relief I found an assembly of spider guts and legs smooshed into a gooey mass.

Yay, me.

I had survived a potentially lethal encounter with an arachnid.

Then one of the scariest thoughts I have ever had formed in my mind: if this spider was that big this early in the year, what will be waiting for me over the next few weeks.

Even as I write this, I shudder at the thought.

Perhaps going outside is over-rated.

Perhaps there are benefits to living in a sealed room with filters and screens and anti-spider lasers surrounding the house.

Am I over reacting?

No! No, I am not.

Copyright 2017, Darren Handschuh

Eeeeek, the bugs are back

Spring is, without question, my favourite season.
The snow is gone; the sun is out; the trees start to bloom and, over all, it is just a wonderful time to be alive.
There is, however, one small drawback to spring: the return of bugs.
The winter months, while cold, are a bug-free environment, devoid of the nasty, little critters that go into stasis until it is time to re-awaken and scare the snot out of me once again.
During the winter, I forget what it is like to have a creepy, buzzing, insect fly into my hair (what little of it I have) and twist around to get free.
This instantly and without fail causes me to thrash wildly as I try to get the vermin off my head lest I do something in my trousers I have not done since I was a small child.
In case you haven't guessed, I don't like bugs.
When I was a young lad, bugs did not bother me a bit. I used to catch them, hold them in my hands and, in general, I was at one with the insect. But the older I got, the less I liked them.
My first bug encounter of this year involved some sort of flying beast.
It was a cross between an ant and a pterodactyl, only bigger and scarier.
It landed on the back of my neck and threatened to work its way down the back of my shirt.
Without thinking, my ninja-like reflexes grabbed the winged horror. It squirmed between my finger and thumb and I almost – almost – screamed like a small, frightened girl.
As soon as I clamped down on the unholy abomination, my mind started to race.
First, I was amazed at how big this thing was. Shouldn't it just be a tiny little insect at this time of year?
This monstrosity was a full grown bug.
And whenever there is an encounter with a bug of any kind, the question looms: what kind of bug is it?
If you ask entomologists, they will say there are millions of types of bugs out there. I am not a bug expert, but I can tell you that there are only two types of bugs in the this world – ones that will hurt you and ones that won't.
I did not know what type of bug this was.
Was it the kind with a giant stinger, or pincers, or a knife — or a gun? Who knows?
Or was it one of those friendly, Disney type bugs that instead of hurting you becomes your adorable little friend?
I did not know and as I felt the beast try to get free from my grasp I waited for the pain. The searing, instant pain that only an evil bug can deliver.
All these thoughts tore through my semi-panicked mind in a nano-second. Time slows down when you are in great peril and holding some form of nasty bug between my fingers was great peril indeed.
As I pulled my hand away from my neck I looked at the critter and saw this brownish-red head with huge eyes looking at me.
However, there was no pain, so either I had it in such a hold it could not unleash its insect fury or it was one of those friendly bugs.
With reflexes that would make Chuck Norris look like a sloth on Valium, I threw the offending beast to the ground only to watch it spread it massive wings and soar away, blocking the sun as it passed.
I still don't know what kind of bug it was, and to tell you the truth I don't really care.
I survived my first up-close-and-personal contact of 2017 with an insect.
But if this is a sign of things to come, it's going to be a long summer.

Copyright 2017, Darren Handschuh

And that's why I'm scared of spiders

A few people have asked me recently how I became so deathly afraid of spiders.

Was I born an arachnid wimp who always screeched like a frightened school girl at the site of an eight-legged beast, or did it take time to become such a fraidy cat?

It happened one fateful day when I was in elementary school.

Up until that day of infamy I was not a huge fan of spiders, but I was not the trembling super wuss I am today.

Like every little boy anywhere in the world, I was interested in gross stuff like bugs, snakes and other such critters. We used to catch grasshoppers by the handful and chase dragonflies every chance we got.

I can even remember grabbing some of those big, ugly, nasty looking water beetles from out of our pool.

As I grew older, my fear and dislike of insects grew – that will happen when you catch a biting or stinging variety one time too many – but I had not yet developed the mind-numbing terror I feel as an adult.

Spiders were never one of my favourite bugs to play with, but it was on a camping trip in school that my stark raving fear of spiders was tattooed onto the psyche.

It was day two of a four-day trip when some friends and I (yes, I had friends in school) were goofing around and running about the campground.

I can remember being chased by buddy of mine for some reason or another when I turned hard off the roadway and into the surrounding woods.

I was ducking and dodging branches and bushes like a woodland sprite when I cut between two trees.

It was then that fate took its cruel turn in an incident that would scar me for life.

You see, strung between those two poplar trees was a spider web. A big spider web. A big spider web that was about head high.

I hit the web at full speed and it wrapped around my face like a mask. Of course spider webs are sticky, so it didn't just hit my face, it super glued itself to my entire head.

Now the thing about spider webs is they often contain a spider. And often the spider will sit in the very centre of the web and wait for an unsuspecting insect to get caught in its trap of doom.

When I hit the web, the spider, which was roughly the size of a small Bassett hound, ended up in my left eye socket.

As of that wasn't bad enough, the beast then scampered up my forehead, over the top of my head and down my back – into my shirt.

To say I freaked out is to say the Titanic had a bit of a mishap.

I clawed at the web to get it off my head even as I felt the spider run down the back of my neck.

I was spinning and turning and thrashing like a mad man having a standing seizure.

This is known as the spider dance – an uncontrollable, panic-driven set of moves designed to rid yourself of any possible intruder. This works for bugs of all description, but is most enthusiastically done with a spider.

Anyway, after doing the spider dance to the amusement of my friends, I tore my shirt off, slammed it on the ground and continued to twist and gyrate like I was on fire.

Once I calmed down, I stomped on the shirt repeatedly in case the spider was still in its cottony folds.

I don't recall if I ever wore that shirt again, but to this day I can still recall the feeling of that massive, prehistoric-sized spider clambering across my face and head.

Even thinking about it now sends a shiver up my spine causing me to do the spider twitch (a much more subdued version of the spider dance.)

And that, dear readers, is how I became terrified of spiders; and really, who could blame me.

Copyright 2016, Darren Handschuh

Spiders are not a good wedding gift

I recently read a article by local museum curator Ron Candy in which he talked about spiders.
As any one who has read my past columns knows, I do not like spiders. Actually they scare the snot out of me.
In my teen years, my then-girlfriend thought it would be great fun to throw a rather large and ugly spider at me. I am not ashamed, I admit it, I screamed like a frightened school girl on Halloween night.
I then did the spider dance and was generally creeped out for the rest of the day.
In Ron's column, he talked about how beneficial the little critters are. I have never argued their benefit to the world, I have just demanded their execution on sight.
No trial, no jury and no mercy, just straight to the death chamber commonly known as the bottom of my shoe.
The only good spider is a spider that has been smashed into a unrecognizable pile of goo. Now that's my kind of arachnid.
Ron's column talked about how spiders are revered in some cultures. Let's just say I am not from that culture.
Some cultures eat spiders, and I say go ahead because a dead spider is a good spider, just don't invite me over for dinner.
Some cultures keep spiders as pets. Friends of mine have a teen aged son who has a tarantula as a pet. One day she was talking to my wife and said the tarantula had escaped its enclosure.
My wife asked how many times that had happened.
Slamming my foot to the ground as hard as I could my answer was, “Once.”
And I meant it. If I was at their house and the eight-legged horror was walking across the room they would have one less pet to feed (and a carpet to clean.)
Ron goes on to say Hindus in eastern Bengal collect spiders and let them go at a wedding as a sign of good luck.
Who in the blue hell thinks a small army of spiders crawling all over the place is good luck. I would rather have the wedding guests stick pencils up my nose for luck.
It might be good luck for my wife because she could start our marriage by cashing in my life insurance. If there are 100 people at the wedding and each one of them let even one spider go, that would be it for me. I would see all these little eight-legged nasties running around and I would be out of there so fast the wind from me leaving would knock people over.
But if you think that is bad, Ron goes on to describe another tradition in Egypt where it is common practice to place a spider in the bed of the newly married couple.
OK, hold it. Stop right there. Folks, you have just crossed the line.
Putting a spider in my bed is quite possibly the worst idea I have ever heard. Can you imagine being all in love and happy about the nuptials only to find a bug-eyed monster staring back at you from the honeymoon love lounger?
It would be the shortest honeymoon in the history of honeymoons.
“Honey, why don't you pull the sheets back. I'll be right there.”“Why yes my new wife, that sounds like a great plan.”
“Honey, what was that high-pitched scream? Honey? Honey?”
The next sound would be the door breaking as I ran through it to get out of the room.
Throwing rice and toilet-papering the car is quite enough of a wedding tradition for me thank you.

Copyright 2016, Darren Handschuh

I faced pure evil, and won

I am proud to say I went toe-to-toe with evil itself and I did not flinch, I did not waiver, I did not scream like a small school girl and run out of the room.

Instead, I steeled my nerves, summoned courage from deep within my soul and slayed the beast that was threatening me.

Yes folks, it's true: I killed a spider like a man.

I was in the kitchen when out of the corner of my eye I saw it.

A grey figure scampering across the countertop. For a brief instant I froze as my mind reeled at the creature before me.

What kind of horror is this? What kind of spawn from hell itself was invading my home?

As I turned to face my nemesis, it stopped and looked at me tauntingly with its beady little eyes, fangs of doom and eight legs of terror.

It was mocking me, daring me to challenge its existence. At that moment time stood still and I knew it was either him, or me.

Suddenly, he started to move and I had to act fast.

I did not have time to grab paper towel in which to encase and smash him. Nor was there a flame thrower, incendiary device or weapons-grade plutonium handy, so I charged forward with the ferocity of a wild beast.

Unleashing my inner cave man, I attacked with unbridled rage and with a bare hand smashed the creature from hell with a single mighty blow, claiming a staggering victory for arachnophobes everywhere.

However, having a smashed spider on my hand really creeped me out so I ran, I mean, casually strolled to the washroom where I rinsed his guts from my skin – a lot.

It is a day that shall go down in infamy. The day I faced my worst fear and won.

Some people might say it was a shallow victory because the spider was just slightly smaller than the flat part of a thumb tack, but hey, it was still a spider and I still killed it with my bare hands so I am counting that as a victory.

It's not that I hate spiders...OK, well actually I do, I do hate spiders.

I hate pretty much all spiders and now is the time of year when they make a reappearance after several serene winter months without them.

I know I will have many encounters of the icky kind before the cold weather returns and I am not looking forward to any of them.

“Spiders are more afraid of you, than you are of them.”

No they're not.

I doubt a spider ever peed a little while running out of the room because a huge Darren fell on him from the ceiling.

“Spiders are harmless.”

I don't care.

And for the record, not all spiders are harmless. The black widow is a nasty piece of work and can harm you.

There are black widows in the area, so some local arachnids are dangerous.

And with international shipping and travel, how do we know the spider I am gently trying to save is not a deadly species accidentally introduced to the region and by catching and releasing it I am actually dooming the area to a spider-filled nightmare.

That innocent little spider I just squashed could have been a baby Goliath tarantula that will grow into a monster with fangs the size of a chihuahua's tail.

Think of the children.

It is a chance I simply refuse to take, so whenever I see a spider of any size, shape and colour I will slay it.

You are welcome.

Don't 'bug' me when I'm driving

It is one of the most horrifying, unnerving experiences you can have while driving, and it happened to me just the other day.
I was cruising down the road, enjoying a sunny summer's day like I have done countless times. It was not so hot I had to have the air conditioning on, so I had my window open.

That's when it happened.

I actually heard the insect hit the door jam of my car and I saw a black mass out of the corner of my eye.

I knew the condor of bugs had just entered my vehicle, but what I didn't know was the status of the bug - what kind of bug it was and how pissed off it was over being clobbered by my import.

I glanced to my left and saw a black figure – roughly the size of a full-grown ostrich – on the top of my seatbelt near the window.

And then it was gone.

I do not want to say panic set it...

It did set in, I just don't want to say it.

When you come right down to it, there really are only two types of bugs on this planet: ones that will hurt you, and ones that won't.

The odds of a bug this large being some sort of engorged lady bug were very slim, so my mind immediately went to the kind of bug that can cause pain.

It was no longer on my the top of the seatbelt near my head, so that means it was in the car somewhere.

My first fear was it had fallen between me and the seat and it was getting ready to deliver the mother of all stings or bites – or both.

Travelling down the highway and 100-ish km/h is not a good time to have an insect attack. Well, no time is a good time, but barrelling down the blacktop is an even worse time.

I reached around behind my back trying to locate the beast before it took its revenge upon me for hitting it with my car.

I reached around as far as I could then sort of lifted myself off the seat as best I could to see it maybe the monster was on the seat – not an easy thing to do at highway speeds, but I know we have all done it.

The whole time I am searching, I am also waiting. Waiting for the searing pain that only an angry insect can deliver.

By now I had slowed down considerably and was pulling over to the side of the road, getting ready to evacuate my car like it was on fire.

I stopped, jumped out and danced around the side of the road for a minute with terrifying thoughts running through my mind.

What it went down my shirt and was just knocked out, soon to awaken and bring down its wrath upon me?

Not good.

So I thrashed about for a minute trying to make sure the Jurassic bug was not on my clothing.

It was not, so that means it was still in the car.

Gulp.

I looked at the driver's seat and found nothing. A gargantuan beast of this size could not easily hide, so it had to be in there somewhere.

I opened the back door and looked on the rear seat and again saw nothing.

Had I imagined it? Was the bug some sort of hallucination brought on by my dislike of insect vermin?
No, I know what I saw and heard, and what I saw and heard was a bug hit my car and and bounce inside.

It was in there alright. Perhaps it was hiding, healing and regaining its strength for an attack.

I then looked on the floor next to the seat and there it was – a wasp.

Not just any wasp, but a monster wasp, at least two pounds worth of wasp.

Well, maybe it wasn't that big, but it was big enough.

Spiders, spiders everywhere - eeeeek

Just reading the story freaks me out.
There is a family in the U.S. who bought a house that was already occupied.
No, there was not a hillbilly family living under the stairs, it was something much more horrifying – spiders.
Not just a few spiders, not even a few dozen spiders, but thousands of spiders. Thousands of brown recluse spiders - a very poisonous and dangerous spider.
It was estimated there were up to 5,000 of the creepy crawlies living in the walls, cupboards, closets, bathroom and every nook and cranny the house of horrors had.
The owner said the walls were 'bleeding spiders' there were so many of them. They would come out of every opening they could find, they would fall on people in the shower, they would...sorry, I had to stop typing for a second to do the spider dance where you twitch and jerk and brush away imaginary spiders that your mind is convinced are crawling all over you.
Just thinking about that many spiders is enough to give me the heebie jeebies and make me feel like they are crawling down the back of my shirt and...sorry, spider dance again.
The family has moved out and successfully sued the former owner for failing to mention the unwanted guests.
The former home owner immediately filed for bankruptcy, leaving the current owners stuck between a rock and a house full of spiders.
When we first moved to the area, my wife and I rented a home that had more than its fair share of arachnid activity.
Their numbers may not have been in the thousands, but a handful is more than enough to keep you awake at night wondering what is crawling into bed with you.
There was an extremely low vacancy rate at the time and the slumlord, er, I mean home owner knew it, so he had little interest in making improvements to the 1940s abode that had not seen an upgrade in many years, meaning we were left to face the hell-born beasts on our own.
After smashing more spiders than I ever thought possible, I bought a can of bug killer spray and hosed down the entire house. I sprayed every nook, cranny, opening and any area that might possibly harbour one of the messengers of terror.
Once the spraying was done, it was time to get out of there for a little while.
We took the dogs for a walk and when we came back it looked like a horror movie with dead bugs everywhere and...sorry, spider dance again.
We cleaned out their remains, but we knew the spiders were anything but vanquished.
They would be back, oh yes, there would be more.
But by this time we were at peace with the spider realm and shared our home with God's multi-legged creatures, living in harmony and happiness – yea, right.
Nope, we smashed every single one we could. After the chemical attack of doom, there were fewer spiders, but even fewer spiders is still too many spiders.
Zero spiders is the target number of spiders I am willing to share my home with.
We called that house The Addams Family home because it was just as creepy as the home of the TV ghouls who enjoy stuff like that.
We did not enjoy it, but there was really no where else for us to go. At the time, we were so broke a homeless guy gave me 25 cents, and we could not afford to move for several more months.
In all, we lived in the spider nest for 15 months before we had saved up enough to buy a modest town house – a spider-free town house I might add.
I look back on those early years of our marriage with fond memories – except for the spiders of course, that I look back on with terror and...spider dance.

Terror lurks under the deck

It was not a good job for someone with arachnophobia.
The fear of eight-legged creepy crawlies can be terrifying at worst (and at best actually, because I really do hate spiders.)
Nothing in this world ― not a visit from the inlaws, a trip to the dentist, not even other bugs, scare me as much as a spider.
So with that manhood-shriveling fear in mind, you can understand why I was so reluctant to clean under the back deck of my humble home.
When we moved in to the house, the space under the deck was open and really not good for anything, so I put my vast array of carpentry 'skills' to work and enclosed the area with  two-by-fours and plywood.
The first thing I needed was tools and thanks to a watchful eye, I spotted several much-needed pieces of equipment in local flyers, the discount section of hardware stores and yard sales and soon I had an arsenal of mass construction. 
All of this was purchased with my wife's consent – more or less anyway.
Eventually I had everything I needed from a compound mitre saw (my favourite new tool) to a framing-finishing-gun-air-compressor combo (my second fav tool.)
Feeling like a real carpenter, I even bought one of those little pouch thingies carpenters wear to hold their hammer, nails, pencil, measuring tape, sawdust and what ever else happened to land in all those pockets.
The job didn't take long, and before I could say 'Why won't this stupid board fit, I measured it three times,' the job was done.
I was pleased with my mastery over wood products and the prowess I possessed in building such a fine enclosure.
Three walls, two doors and a window were all done by someone with marginal carpentry experience. 
Next came filling the newly created enclosure with stuff I wanted to store. First were the kid's bikes that could finally be kept under lock and key. After having three bikes 'liberated' from my yard it was becoming rather tiresome, but since I completed the addition to my home not a single bike has wondered off.
As time crept along, more and more items ended up under the deck, some of which had not been moved for years.
But along with the structural addition to my home came another addition: a breeding ground for spiders. At first it was not too bad, but after a few years there were more spider webs in that little space than moustaches in Mexico.
It was also getting full of leaves and dust and clutter, so I decided it was time to charge in and clean it out.
The first task was to move everything out of the area. Actually that was the second task, the first was to get a good pair of leather work gloves so I would not run the risk of my skin coming in contact with an arachnid.
When I moved a box and saw a wolf spider – that was actually larger than a real wolf – scurry away, I knew it was time to call in the heavy artillery: my shop vac.
With the longest tube extensions I possessed, my peak 5.5 horsepower spider killer was ready to go. I would move items with one hand and vacuum with the other. I sucked up roughly 2,347 pounds worth of spider webs, or something in that range anyway.
I also caught up to that wolf spider and I actually heard it make a clunking sound as its enlarged body entered the cold chamber of my shop vac.
I am still shuttering.
It took a while, but a decade of spider build up has been cleaned out. 
I also learned a valuable lesson that day: when doing a job that involves spiders, webs and other forms of ickyness – make my son do it.

copywrite 2014 Darren Handschuh