Along came a spider...

We have some swings in our back yard. 

My kids have gotten taller of late and it was becoming difficult for most of them to pump on the swings without dragging their feet on the ground so I decided it was time to move the swings up a bit.

That meant I needed to cut away some of the protective plastic to expose the metal swing chain underneath so that I could hook those lovely links to the crossbeam and the swings would sit higher off the ground (you get the idea).

So, I grabbed my industrial strength scissors and started into the job.

Then a horrible brown spider scuttled out of the plastic coating, across my hand and jumped for his life onto the grass below.

I screamed.

(I do that when I encountered spiders and I'm not ready to be brave.)

After that first face off with an arachnid I became more cautious. 

But to my dismay, every single one of these plastic protected chains housed at least one disgusting eight legged creature.  YUCK!

But I had to be courageous.  My children were watching and I don't want my ridiculous fear passed on to them if I can help it.

The last chain contained this lovely bit of spider heaven (which I promptly destroyed).  Normally I tell the kids that spiders outside of our house get to live because we are in their home (if they are inside then it is death by shoe and I refuse to feel bad about it).  But in this case I decided our swing set was an extension of our house so no mercy was applied.

 

This was not quite what I expected when I started the swing heightening chore.

Gross!