Bold and brazen bugs will parade right in front of you

Oh, they are out there all right. Things. Things that crawl, slide, creep around, hide in your clothes, especially your underwear, and generally scare the living…well, you know what out of you.

Scientists like to give them designer names like arachnid, which is really a nice way of saying, “Run for your lives, it’s a spider!!” Believe me, there is no sweet way to describe something with four pairs of legs and eight eyes.

Some of these spiders, excuse me, I mean arachnids, are the size of Kate Smith or a junior dinosaur. Most of you probably aren’t old enough to remember Kate Smith, but she had an afternoon television show during the early years of television broadcasting.

She was famous for singing, “When the Moon Comes Over the Mountain.” There were no visuals back then, mostly because Kate Smith was the size of not one mountain, but a whole chain of mountains.

Everyone overlooked her size because she had something going for her that most modern musicians lack; she actually could sing. Just kidding, of course, or not. And no one could forget her introduction of the rendition of “God Bless America.”

Anyway, I don’t know if the tomatoes are getting bigger or these bugs have just been taking case loads of steroids and working out a lot.

But the truth of the matter is that the spiders that arrive on your doorstep with a suitcase in one hand and a blow-up mattress in the other are just plain enormous.

Some of them would be too big to even qualify for the “Biggest Loser” popular television show. And it appears that they have checked their I.Q. at the door also. Bold and brazen, they will parade right in front of you, sometimes even stopping to ask where the bathroom is located.

You know, bugs used to be discreet. They never wanted to be identified and targeted. Often they wore sneakers and the only way to detect them was a brief motion you sensed out of the corner of your eye.

You would turn and it would be gone, perhaps a figment of your imagination or one of those floating spots in your eyes that come with age and not listening to your mother years ago, when she told you that you would go blind because you were sitting too close to the television.

Then a few minutes later, that motion would be sensed again. Sure, the curtain fluffed up like from a sudden gust of wind. The only hint of something else in the house were the miniature black high-top sneakers, four of them, sticking out from under the cloth that draped down from the window.

I wouldn’t categorize the fly with the dreaded spider group though. Yes, they are annoying. But for some reason, the fly seems fair game, whereas squashing a spider might just land you in hot water with the animal-rights group.

Perhaps it is because the fly is like Fredo, from the movie “The Godfather.” Not only was Fredo weak and stupid, but you just knew he would sell you out in a New York minute.

I have friends whose batting averages with swinging a fly swatter are so impressive, Major League Baseball scouts have shown up on their doorstep. You also get to put little chalk outlines around the fly, which looks kind of cool. The spider will be dust under your shoes for months to come.

It doesn’t do you any good to call 911 either. You know the mere mention of spiders has the dispatchers all standing on their chairs or desks muffling their screams as they try to direct you on how to leave the country.

Anyway, it is the season. So keep your eyes front, head up and try not to hurt yourself hammering that For Sale sign in front of your house.