Eeek! I mean, BIG TIME EEK! Spider!

[DiosaBellissima]

::Random, Evil, Mutant Spider Story::

One evening I walked out onto my front porch to get something out of the garage. As I was walking back into the house, I look up and see a black widow that was easily the size of a silver dollar. Well, I am horribly afraid of spiders- I can’t even watch them on TV- so I decided my little, 8 legged nemises needed to die…quickly.

I grabbed the hose and sprayed that sucker- hard. I made sure it was in a puddle of water about 3 inches deep for over a minute. You know what it did? Started swimming. Yeah.

So I ran in the house and got a bottle of bleach. I poured the entire gallon (?) on that stupid spider. I laughed as I watched the spider’s movements slow. But then, I started to get dizzy. Stupid bleach. I walked out into the yard to get some air for a minute and returned, fully expecting to find the carcass of the evil, devil creature.

But no! The spider was alive and well, walking around like nothing had happened. Now explain this to me: the bleach made me- a 150+ pound human- feel like I was going to pass out, but a couple ounce creature that was SWIMMING in it could survive?

Yeah, I then made someone come kill it for me with their shoe. I’ve also come to the conclusion that there is nuclear waste somewhere on our property that is making giant, mutant, unkillable spiders.

[Johnny_L.A]

@Contrapuntal

A Daddy Longlegs is a Harvestman ,not a spider.

There are two animals called ‘daddy long-legs’. One of them is the non-spider harvestman.

The other is a spider commonly called ‘daddy long-legs’: Pholcus phalangioides. (I wish I knew where my 3-D glasses are!)

[scr4]

@Johnny L.A.

There are two animals called ‘daddy long-legs’. One of them is the non-spider harvestman.

So which one features in the “the most venomous spider in the world, but they can’t bite through human skin” myth, and which one did Mythbusters test?

[Johnny_L.A]

Okay, I may as well post a couple of previously-related spider stories.

My dad hated black widow spiders. He hated them so much that he’d go out in the middle of the night (he worked a rotating shift and often got off work at midnight) hunting them with a flashlight and fly-swatter. Black widows are not normally dangerous to most people, but they’re nasty enough that I don’t mind killing them. (I leave most spiders alone. If they’re in the house, I catch them and take them outside.) Anyway… Dad was not hunting black widows one particular time, but one found him. It bit him on the back of his left calf. The bite area ulcerated and it took several weeks for it to heal. Needless to say, no black widow was safe when dad was around!

I was getting ready to go diving. I kept my wetsuit in the garage, and it was a little dusty. I took it out on to the lawn to hose it off. I put the hose into one of my booties and was cleaning it out, when a black widow crawled up onto my hand. I did the spider hand-flail, and Ms. Black fell to the lawn. She quickly departed this mortal coil, being despatched under the toe of my shoe.

My former fiancée is a mousey little girl, but she has gumption. She learned karate, and she flew Black Hawks in the first Gulf War. But she was terrified of black widows. When she was cleaning out her parents’ home after her father died (her mom was in a home) she discovered a rather large black widow spider in the middle of the tool shed. I took care of it for her.

[Johnny_L.A]

@scr4

So which one features in the “the most venomous spider in the world, but they can’t bite through human skin” myth, and which one did Mythbusters test?

That would be the Pholcus. (Jamie did get bitten, but it took a lot of provocation IIRC.)

I never saw a harvestman until last year.

[Kythereia]

@danceswithcats

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:

But promiscuous spiders are the best kind…

[Tuckerfan]

@Kythereia

But promiscuous spiders are the best kind…

Yeah, right. You say that now, but what happens if they start shacking up with those filthy whores known as sea gulls?

[sj2]

@TwoTrouts

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!

You know what? I’m a freaking idiot. I know that if I open that picture, I’m going to get the chills. So what do I do? Click the link and close my eyes of course. No way to get back to the SDMB without seeing it now…So now I’m looking all 'round me to make sure one (or a group) of them is not plotting to take me out. :eek:

[Johnny_L.A]

@sj2

it now…So now I’m looking all 'round me to make sure one (or a group) of them is not plotting to take me out. :eek:

Hey, did you see that thing move near your foot?

Oh, never mind. Just a dust-bunny.

[Cerri]

I’ll just repost the story I related on a previous spider encounter thread:

Posted by Cerri:

I don’t really get bothered by spiders these days. I never kill em in the house when I see them, and if I’m motivated enough at the time, I’ll usually just catch em and put them outside.

However. I was terrified of any sort of spider or insect when I was a kid. (Still terrified of most insects, actually…I can handle ladybugs and caterpillars, but the caterpillars have to be the furry kind, or they oog me out).

One time, my father (a CPA) was doing some work on the side and had a client over at the house. My mom was upstairs washing her hair or something, and had sent me to the basement to get some towels.

Now, our basement terrified me as a kid. It was a cold, concrete unfinished basement, it had very low lighting, and I just knew there was something living under the stairs that wanted to grab me and eat me up.

So, when I was forced to go into the basement for something, I used to jump down the last 4-5 stairs. Because, ya know, that way the goblins couldn’t grab my ankles or nothin. (Hey, quit laughin, I was like 7 at the time)

So, I went down, jumped down the stairs, ran to the machine, grabbed the towels, and turned for my dash upstairs. (The goblins wouldn’t grab me if I was facin them, like as I was going up the stairs…what can i say, I had a vivid imagination).

Reached the bottom of the stairs, dropped the towels, and started screaming as if the goblins had grabbed me and were in the process of disemboweling me.

There, on the third stair from the bottom, was someone’s escaped pet tarantula. No, I’m really not exaggerating. It was a f*cking tarantula. My mom ran down the stairs 3 at a time to see who was murdering her eldest, saw the thing, and joined me in the screaming, till my dad came downstairs.

He sees my mother and I screaming and pointing frantically, sees the tarantula, and yells “Holy sht! WHAT THE FCK IS THAT THING?!?” just as our neighbor (the aforementioned tax client) comes to look, joining me and my mom in our blind panic.

Finally, my dad grabbed the bathtowel off the floor where I’d dropped it, threw it on the spider, and quickly started jumping up and down on the stair it had been perched upon, yelling some sort of Accountant’s War Cry the whole time.

I refused to go into the basement for months after the Tarantula Incident.

You know, when I think about it these days, I feel bad for that spider. You know it never moved an inch the whole time? I figure it was just staring at us the whole time saying to it’s self " What the f*ck is wrong with these people?"