Spider Patroling The Bathroom Or Rattlesnake De-Mousing The Laundry Room

Anyone who knows me know that I'm not afraid of bugs or spiders.  But my patience has been sorely tested (what do you suppose that old expression was originally supposed to mean - tested out a new horse until your muscles were all sore?   Or maybe I don't have the expression right at all - should it be sorely tempted - which also makes no sense?) by the massive number of tiny (and some not so tiny) beetle-like creatures that share our apartment in Tulsa.  So I was happy to come home last month and find a small spider had spun a web on the baseboard of my bathroom and had dealt firmly with a great deal of the beetles.  (Yes, he ate them!)  Since I would only be home for a few days before heading out again, I left him alone.  But unfortunately for Mr. Spider, my presence scared of his dinner and he had to be moved out to the front porch flower pot so he wouldn't starve.  Now my point, and I do have one, is that families understand these things about each other, even if no one else does, so I told my sister Lynne, (the one who lives in the state park with her husband the Park Ranger) my spider rescue story.  Not only did she agree that leaving a spider alone to do the exterminating was logical, she told that she had done the same thing when they moved into the Ranger House.  The house had all manner of mice and maybe some rats and other small undesirable roommates that had moved in between tenants.  But luckily, a small Rattlesnake moved into the corner of the laundry room through the same opening that the mice had found.  So for a week, she only did laundry at night (when all the snakes are asleep - as they teach you at Ranger School), until the house was varmint free.  Then she had the snake guy come and take away the Rattler, patched the little hole, and enjoys her pest free home.  Although the story seemed to freak-out her other friends, to me that made perfect sense.