A Daddy Longlegs is a Harvestman ,not a spider.
Spiders are cool.
For the record, what you’re calling “daddy long legs” are probably cellar spiders. Apparently, they mainly eat other spiders. But that doesn’t mean I don’t get rid of them anyway.
I was initially skeptical of the story of the brazilian wandering spider, but apparently it’s real enough. And given that it happened in Australia, I can understand why it was let go. I can see them thinking, “Huge and creepy? Deadly venomous? Probably from around here.”
I was going to say the same thing, but apparently the Pholcus spiders are called “daddy long legs spiders” in some circles. I agree with you though; daddy long legs == harvestmen == opilionids.
A mere technicality, my dear. It’s sufficiently spiderish to be immediately marked for execution the second it wriggles within reach of my vacuum-cleaner hose. I am not going to stop and investigate every bug-oid critter for nationality before I wipe its sorry multilegged butt out of existence.
I have a similar policy regarding scorpions and crawdads.
How do you kill a crawdad?
Yeah? If I ever go to India, I’ll take a flamethrower with me to take care of virus-laden mosquitos and hideous-abortions-of-God’s-holy-creation spiders. 
Again: flame, and lots of it.
Actually, the link is to an Australian newspaper but the incident happened in England. Here’s a BBC aritcle (warning: contains closeup photo of spider) on the incident. Boiling water and microwave are not mentioned, however.
Heh, CNET is spinning it as “Camera phone saves man from deadly spider”.
BTW there are great photos of this specis here. :eek:
Y’know what creeps me out? Any critter without exactly two eyes.
Too many eyes.
Not enough eyes.
Also not enough eyes.
Hmmm. That…*might * work. Maybe. Dear Og, if you ever saw one of the spiders in India, you’d scream and run to the next continent. They’re large enough to fill your shoe. :eek: And that’s only in North India- the ones in the South are big as small cats.
Kythereia, my dear, I didn’t notice your post before. Glad to see you like spiders, too.
Around here (Fort Worth, Texas) and in the Southeast US, crawdads are generally boiled with spices and then eaten. But not by me. I do not eat shellfish. Or scavengers. I especially don’t eat scavenger shellfish.
Thank you for putting India further down my list of must see places. 
snort
Am I the only one who checked your last link?
Dude, you are soooooo going to hell for that last link.
<< climbs up on her soapbox >> Ahem. Most, if not all, spiders are toxic. (It’s how they kill their prey.) Not all are poisonous to humans.
Even so, no spider has the right to be wherever I may be naked. This is not limited to my bathtub. Any spider found in bathtubs or bedrooms will be squished with all due haste. <<climbs off her soapbox>>
Carry on.
Oh fine. Praise and support all of the promiscuous spiders. Shame the chaste spiders who did as their parents said, saving themselves for later. Great. Just great. :rolleyes:
Yeah, but his going to hell is going to be so worth it. 
Fortunately, this rarely comes up in my neck o’ the woods. But there was a creek with some crawdad things in it near where I grew up, and my general policy was RUN THE HELL AWAY REAL FAST SCREAMING MY HEAD OFF 'CUZ IT MIGHT BE A SCORPION.
Hopefully, my screaming then attracts someone braver and stupider, who then grabs a rock and smooshes it for me.
Thanks for pointing that out cause I am one of those girls who just has to touch the paint to make sure the sign is telling the truth. I ran right over to check out that link and I can still feel my skin crawl.
Let me get this straight. He throws boiling water on the spider, puts it in a jar and then nukes it?
If that ain’t a recipe for creating a giant, mutant spider who will hunt you down, pierce you with fangs the size of broadswords, and suck out your lifeblood, I don’t know what is.