While walking down forest paths as a child we’d point forked branches in front of us to grab spiderwebs before they got on us.
My current house has House centipedes, which are like a centipede with spider legs. Creepy things, they range from an inch or so long up to several inches.
I stepped on a slug once while wearing a thin pair of socks outside. It mushed between my toes. The slime crawled along the cotton until I could remove the socks and wash them out.
He must have a strong will. Me, I don’t wait for confirmation.
The other day I was folding a stack of old towels and putting them on a shelf in the garage. Suddenly, my son, who was helping me, said in a very tense voice, “Mom…Mom…”
I replied, “WHAT?!” and flung the towels at him with great energy. Turns out, there was no spider, just some dangling towel threads that had him worried, but you don’t take chances with these things.
My husband learned that one day when we were walking in the woods. He told me to hold still a moment…then watched in amazement as I screamed and beat myself up. That time, it was a staticky sock which had clung to the back of my sweater. :o
Reminds me of the fellow who attempted to stomp on a Dock Spider.
I dunno if you have seen these - we have them up at the cottage in northern Quebec. They are very large, fast and powerful spiders. The largest can have a legspan the size of the palm of your hand, or larger, and as the name suggests, they love to hang around docks.
They don’t make webs, but rather run about hunting for prey. They are excellent runners and jumpers …
Anyway, this poor guy attempted to stomp on a huge one, only to have the spider jump onto his shoe and scurry up his pants. This lead to the amusing sight of a grown man doing some sort of modern dance while apparently attempting to beat himself in the nuts … the spider escaped quite unhurt when the pants were ripped off. 
Tis getting to be the season for spiders in the woods, and more to the point, spider webs. During the Fall around here, it seems you can’t take 5 steps in the woods without getting a face full of web and its current occupant. Fortunately, they’re most always orb weavers (scroll down), and are completely harmless.
Then you, my friend, are not a true arachnophobe.
I would gladly suffer flaming death by my own hand than have a spider on my face…they go for your eyes you know. Your muthafuggin EYES!
I’m getting hives just from reading the OP.
Me? I got taken down by the fire ant mafia one night. Don’t even know which Don I offended.
Living out in the desert in a 2-bedroom modular house. Slept nekkid, 'cause I could, and the blinds were all closed. Late at night, I turned off the lights and crawled into bed. I kicked the sheets out to get a little more room down at my feet.
Felt an itchy sting. Meh. Prolly an old mosquito bite. Felt another. sigh There goes the overactive imagination again. And a third, a fourth, a fi- AAAAAAHWHATTHEFUCKWARGARBLE!
Ran, covered in fire ants, to my shower where I washed them all off. By the time I was done, I counted 34 bites, including one right on my nipple (owie). All my clothes were in my bedroom, and my bedroom was clearly contaminated. Plus, it’s the middle of the night, and I don’t want my neighbors watching my silhouette, so I have to do my search naked with a flashlight.
No ants in the kitchen. No ants in the living room. No ants in the spare bedroom. No ants in the bathroom. Hmmm, moderate number of ants scattered on the main bedroom carpet. Pulled back blanket and sheet and found a few ants, but certainly not enough to account for the assault on Iwo Jima I’d just experienced. Pulled sheet and blanket back up, then pulled blanket down by itself.
Hundreds of ants crawling back and forth on top of the sheet and under the blanket. I put on rubber gloves, stripped the bed and packed everything in gallon-sized ziploc bags to go to the laundry the next day. I spent the rest of the night on the sofa, getting up to take another shower approximately every three minutes. I found ants in my HAIR.
Next day, I searched further. Ants were gone. No sign of an entrance. No food or water in the bedroom to attract them. The landlord graciously sent an exterminator out the next day, and I left the bugman a note asking him to do everything short of setting the place on fire. Never had another problem.
From that day forward, I kill every single fire ant I can find, and if I find a mound, I pour boiling water on it. Kharma be damned, I’m getting mine back!
This is horrifying. You are indeed a good friend.
A friend of mine from Alaska once went camping while on the acid. She accidentally slid down a hill in the woods and came to a stop in a rotten moose corpse. Ugh.
As far as MY experience with ickiness… I was living in Memphis, where cockroaches are everywhere. Just sitting on the couch, legs up on the coffee table, watching tv, when I felt a tickle on my thigh. Nice, long, juicy cockroach ambling its way across my leg. shudder I think I pulled all my clothes off just to make sure there weren’t any more lurking about, a la “Stand by me” and the leeches.
“Camping on acid” is one of those ideas that are even worse than they sound.
The worst roach story I ever witnessed happened right here in usually-pretty-clean Toronto.
Some friends of mine, many years ago, rented a communial house - they got it because it was super cheap. There was unfortunately a reason. They took over from another bunch of stoners who had rented the place before them, and been evicted for (among other things) rampant filthiness.
The eviction took some time - and naturally enough, these choice renters stopped doing anything to clean the place, once the landlord started procedures. Indeed, they positively revelled in squallor - the trash was piled in mounds, literally chest high, with little paths through it; and it wasn’t mere clutter, but actual stinky garbage.
Well, my friends finally moved in, but before they did that they had to make the place habitable by humans. This meant mucking out the tons of rotting crap piled up in heaps, and washing everything. This took about a week of solid work.
When I saw the place, the work had been done - it was gleamingly clean (at least, as clean as a crappy old building could be). There was no furniture at all yet, just some milk crates. I sat on one; the others, who had worked there, said “I wouldn’t sit down if I were you”.
“Why not?” I asked.
One of my friends, in answer, lifted another of the milk crates - and about a thousand roaches ran scurrying out from underneath it.
I hurredly stood up - and a dozen or so roaches ran scurrying from under me.
As it turned out, taking out the tons of trash had not actually gotten rid of the huge roach population - they were hiding in every crack and crevase, packed solid. Anything put down soon accumulated a population. It was all very Steven King.
Several courses of chemical treatment managed to control, if not eliminate, this unwanted population.
Here in Central Texas, I don’t really have any horror storys about spiders - all mine have to do with scorpions. I have them every year during the warm months, and extremely wet of dry weather tends to bring more into the house, but this is the first year I have been stung twice.
The first time was about three months ago when one apparently crawled up my righ pant leg as I sat here at the computer, tickled me just below my knee, so when I scratch at my pants, it proceded to sting me.
About a month ago, I was getting up from doing my business on the toilet, pulled my underwear and jeans up, and was immediately stung about eight inches farther up the same leg on the inside of my thigh.
Both times were big scorpions. I have gotten very good about quickly shucking off my pants. I am just disturbed by the trend I see developing here and hope the next scorpion doesn’t move up any farther and sting me.
The thing that amazes me about the spiders I have here is that they seem to be invisible. I paint a lot of small parts which I set outside my workshop on newspaper and spray paint. For some reason, the spiders really like the parts and/or paint. I can place a part outside, give it a coat of paint, come back 30 minutes later, and while spraying a second coat, see that there is already a strand or two of spiderwebbing on the part. I can leave a part outside for as little as 15 minutes, and come back out and find a thread or two on it.
But I never see the spiders.
You’ve GOTTA read this:
Navy. Stationed in Lemoore, CA which is in the San Joaquin Valley, which in turn is just a fuckin’ irrigated desert and home to billions of insects and spiders, particularly black widows.
Part of my job duty was as a night trouble desk responder, which meant I had to sleep at the office, which was always full of bugs. I’m lying in my rack and just about to doze off when I feel something crawling on my leg. My first thought, of course, is black widow or scorpion. I slowly raised the sheet and saw. . .something dark and crawly. . .and launched out of bed slapping and hollering. The guys thought I had gone insane, as probably did the cricket that escaped unharmed.
In Uganda we had the bug of the week, and never did identify most of them. The worst was the Nairobi Eye, a blister bug the size of an ant that would make strong men tremble at the sight of it. I got tangled up with one of them and ended up with gauze and burn cream from my shoulder to my elbow for a week. Nasty little fuckers.
We have spiders by the (apparent) millions here in Portland, and my wife has declared all out war against them. I try to let them be, but some of them get quite large in the fall, and if they’re in my domain, they’re history.
But it’s a hell of a fun song!
You guys should google “Centipede eating mouse”. I won’t do it because I’d like to keep the memories I have from the last time I did that and had to get my memories wiped to erase the image
You. Are. Awesome! I’m trying to train myself to do that. No confirmation, no pause, just a frantic flaying of the limbs as soon as someone tells me to stop!
That … means a mouse that eats centipedes, you just missed typing the hyphen, right? Right?! :eek:
Ooooh, I have seen those videos, or tried to (there are two of them, btw). The mouse is dropped into the terrarium where this HUMONGOUS Scolopendra Gigantea lives… And the latter proceeds to hunt, snatch, bite, envenom and make a meal of the former MEGA-SHUDDER. It doesn’t help that that particular species of centipede can grow to about a foot in size (30+ cm).
I was literally whimpering.
No, I am not linking to those videos, thankyaverramuch… They can be found in youtibe, I think.
Google it and find out!
What does it say about me that my reaction is “Cool, I gotta see that one”?
I am thirty-four years old and have finally learned not to google things that will disturb me. I have thus far managed to avoid the centipide eating mouse and if any of you fuckers try to trick me into looking at it I will unleash a whole hoard of spiders into your house - spiders I am not afraid of at all (unless they are in my hair).
control-z, house centipedes are what we have. When I was young, my parents lived in a home with a large finished basement. It was always much cooler than upstairs. I used to dance semi-professionally, and I would practice in the basement, which had a wall mirror. I’d take off my glasses, and those fuckers would race across the wall and freak the hell out of me since I couldn’t see what they were, just a giant blur.
I have never gotten over it!
Now I am all itchy. GAH!