I clicked the link in this thread about the rat and found this story linked at the bottom of the page. An excerpt:
(bolding mine)
So then later in the story, it says:
This is a spider that had been partially frozen, partially boiled and MICROWAVED and survived, and you think a little cold is gonna kill it?? I sure hope that sucker can’t swim…
Wow! This is what one looks like.
I’ve heard many accounts of critters coming over from South America in boxees of bananas. When in college, my father and his roommates got a box of bananas straight off a ship. When they popped the top of the box off, one of these babies came crawling out!
I really don’t like spiders. They’er all just a bunch of Ilwrath spies anyway. Kill 'em all I say.
WHY WHY WHY did I click on those links?! It must be some sort of perverse need to scare the bejeesus out of myself. I actually screamed and recoiled in horror at TwoTrouts second link.
Whatever you do don’t follow the link he (she?) posted over in the “scorpion in my bedroom” thread.
I think they’re pretty. Spiders are our friends, donchaknow? They eat bugs, especially the damn mosquitos that pass around the malaria virus.
There were only 71 cases of malaria reported to the Minnesota Department of Health in 1999, and 58 of those were among foreign-born people, primarily from Liberia and the Ivory Coast. I think my odds of catching malaria are sufficiently low to warrant KILLING EVERY @^!@#^ SPIDER I SEE.
Preferably with flame. And lots of it.
You leave those spiders alone. They’re cute. 
Yeah? I’ve had malaria. I live in the States, but I visited India and was infected. Sick as a dog for two weeks. 
And there are lots of other insect-born diseases. Not to mention that mosquitos are horrible enough and annoying enough to kill them anyway. Exactly what do mosquitos provide to the world, anyway?
Spiders are on our side of the equation.
Slight hijack, but funny (to me!) spider story.
A big spider had built a big web in my driveway, between a tree and the boat parked there. A buddy was walking up the drive, you could crouch down and miss the web, and said he’d hate to get tangled up with that spider. And just seconds later turned around, right into the spider web. He did the Spider Dance 
<sigh…>
Apparently, we need to review this lesson.
It’s been just over a year since I told this story, so here it is again:
My wife and I had parked under a tree in the Malibu Hills to go to a party. When we got back to the car, it was very dark. When we got in the car, my wife was going ‘ick!’ and brushing at her face and hair with her hands. I said ‘what happened?’ She said ‘I walked through a spider web’. I said ‘yuck. I hate when that happens.’
Then we drove home, about a 45 minute drive. I unlocked our front door, opened it, and turned to my wife to say something. She was standing under the porch light, and I noticed something on the front of her jacket. A large brown something about the size of half a walnut shell. I said ‘Don’t move.’ She obeyed. I carefully reached out and flicked it off her jacket. It flew off behind her. I said ‘OK’. She said, ‘What was it?’ I said, ‘You do not want to know.’
Later, I went back out to the porch, and there it still was, alive but stunned. Apparently it had slept or otherwise remained motionless on my wife the whole 45 minute drive. I shuddered to think what would have happened if it had started crawling on her as we were zooming down the freeway. I threw a matchbook down next to it to take a photo with the matchbook for scale. The photo did not come out well enough to post, but take my word for it, with it’s legs fully extended, the spider was a bit larger than the matchbook, one of the largest orb-weaver spiders I have ever seen in Southern California.
I checked your link.
Bug-eyes kittens make me ill. I thought the spiders were more beautiful, generally.
I’ll give you the puppies.
Tell you what Hal, I’ll take the spiders and the puppies. You can have the kittens and the west nile carrying mosquitos.
I’ve had it. One day of that and you’ll be begging for spiders. 
I’ll take any loose spiders if people don’t want 'em!
(Preferably radioactive ones that will give me mutant powers. Because, man, would that ever be cool.)
I opened this thread thinking poor LifeOnWry had had another spider attack her freshly painted walls again.
I’m fine with spiders as long as they don’t get on me or try to jump out at me. They are dead spider meat if they try one of those things. Other than that, I appreciate their bug eating tendencies. Especially their skeeter and fly eating tendencies.
Anything that eats mosquitoes…
Is. Not. Bad.
:: glares ::
I agree with this wholeheartedly.
Pet spider (which I’ve never had, BTW) on your hands = good, as long as you don’t mind.
Any wild spider landing on you anywhere: very, very bad. Or dangling down from the ceiling in your face.
But you see, that’s just the thing. Because ALL spiders want to do these things, and they also want to bite your eye :smack: . I’m all about preemptive action. If I see no bugs, I am happy. Spiders are behind it, that’s teriffic. But the little cannibalistic bastards had best keep out of my sight or there’s going to be some day-walking arachnids getting “selected against.”
I have currently moved out of the garage (well my car has) because the spiders in there are out of control. Occasionally a daddy long legs will come inside and we’ll watch him/her go room to room, but I’ve walked through a spiderweb with a big reddish black spider and was scared so when they get to be more than 3 or 4 present, I get creeped out and demand my husband do some spider control. I live in Washingonton state and there are a lot of spiders here.
