What the heck...are we in the south???

After I washed my van I stayed out and watching my kids play. I went in to the garage and my wandering eye focused on something on the ground. It was a praying mantis! I have never seen one in real life before...I don't know if I would have been scared if it were alive, so I am just glad it was already dead.










Then, I looked at the other side of our garage and there was this HUGE spider! I immediately saw it's HUGE butt and realized that it was a mommy and she was VERY pregnant. (Do you call spiders pregnant?) so I yelled for Ashleigh to get the Raid...(My best friend in the spring and summer) while I kept a close eye on it. Ya know, cause as soon as I look away i just knew that it would take off and I would never find it again. I got the Raid and said--"Ok mommy spider, here's your chance, if you want to escape you can." Then I waited...for like a millisecond and said "no? Well, ok. but just so you know, this will probably be a

slow death and ALL of your babies will die as well, ok?" She didn't seem to care that she was about to die, so I told the kids to back away and I SPRAYED! And literally her BUTT exploded! All her babies popped out and she tried to run away...I kept on spraying...she was NOT going to get away!




Here is where she ended up in this little gap between a wood post in our garage and the concrete foundation. Can you see her back there? EW...I am for sure going to have nightmares about this whole thing!













And here are her babies....most of them, anyway. They lived a good life--for a whole 1/2 a second before the power of Raid took over and they met their demise.

I can only imagine what would have happened if I had never found her and she had been able to have her babies and they had infested our house! SICK!!!

Aren't these kind of insects only found in the south?