Yes, gross, I know. The oven before.
And after getting blasted with my usual baking soda/vinegar combo (which did not do a thing), and 3 rounds of Easy Off (thanks to my SIL!). Still a few stubborn spots, but exponentially better.
Miscellaneous things had collected on our small front stoop.
A weed eater, weed eater string, antifreeze, brake fluid, oil, oil changing bin, a trash can, Baby Boy's kiddie pool, a plastic bin full of rusted toys, a bag of quickcrete, and a few (heavy!) odds and ends collected from Hubby's construction days.
This is what I encountered while trying to clean it.
Why yes, that is a black widow. Guarding three egg sacs.
One brave brother later, and it's a dead black widow. It made a glorious splatter. The egg sacs just went 'smush'.
I was too creeped out to do any more on the stoop that night, so work stopped for the day.
The next day, I worked on it again and had the pleasure of meeting a tarantula.
It was monstrous! I have never seen a live spider that huge in my entire life. Not the kind of people I'd like to make permanent friends with.
I didn't have time to take a photo of it. Bro was at work, you see, and I was in too much of a hurry to kill it.
He was nice enough (my bro, not the spider) to find a website with a photo of it for me, to be sure I saw what I did. I called it a tarantula because (judging from TV) that's the only arachnid I could compare it to, being so hairy. I was so grossed out to find it was an actual tarantula.
Here's it's twin: *shudder*
Cleared of all spiders.... for now. The grass has been cut since then so it looks a little better than this photo.
I've also found two thriving hornet's nests high above the stoop. So high, I can't get at them. But I've had to kill 4 of the wasps. It seems like every time I come back inside, I find one wasp that has followed me into the house. All I can say is, God bless Black Flag and fly swatters.
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