Making a Tough Anti-Green Choice

I’ll admit, I’ve always been one of those crunchy granola type people. I like jeans and a flannel, hikes in the Adirondacks, growing my own herbs, composting our biodegradables. I carry a Kleen Kanteen or a CamelBak, breastfed my daughter and made all of her baby food, you get the idea.

So a year ago, when I started to notice spiders in our basement and soon after the egg sacks spiders lay, I got a little freaked out. Suffice it to say, I killed some spiders, my husband–the pacifist–caught and released and we forgot about it for a while…

Two weeks ago I was cleaning, after a semi-long stint of not cleaning, and noticed a lot of cob webs. On closer inspection, these weren’t cob webs and they were everywhere, seriously everywhere. Every dark corner, little nook, doorway. The livingroom we never use was spider central, huge webs, lots of spiders, egg sacks (one with teeny, tiny scurrying little spiders in it!!). I swept and squished and then called the exterminator.

Two days later a lovely woman from Ace Walco came to our house and flashlight in hand looked everywhere. And the spiders were mostly everywhere. She pointed out that if you have spiders you need to have lots of other bugs too, to feed them. She showed me a chart of the little buggers and I squirmed. I asked her about green options since I’m currently pregnant and our daugher is only two and a half but the question was half hearted. I wanted the creepy crawlies dead, my skin was crawling and my dreams were filled with spider legs and hatching egg sacks.

They do have green options and they are peppermint based. She said they are effective and I said let’s start with the hard stuff and after that we’ll use the green product as the preventative measure. What she told me was that even if a small animal, something as small as a mouse were sprayed with the bug chemicals it wouldn’t die; they are so diluted. It was all I had to hear. We arranged for them to come back two days later. Vivi and I vacated the house and they sprayed.

Honestly, I don’t feel great about the decision but the spiders are dead. And we’ll move forward with the green alternative at the next appointment in four months. I’m curious if anyone else has had to make a hard choice that wasn’t so “green” when you are trying to live an eco-friendly life and the environment is a priority in your everyday decisions? Have you ever had to spray your house for bugs and do you know of other options?

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