if a situation ever called for full and unrestrained panic…
i hope they gave you some lovely medication at the er.
Oh. My. GOD.
I think I’m going to panic at the very IDEA! A black widow in your PANTS?
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!
Sweet Cadbury Egg, Payton.
I’m not afraid of spiders by any stretch of the imagination (nosiree, snakes are my undoing…shudder), but that’s just…creepy.
Normally, I’d be a smart aleck and ask if you were sure it was in your underoos and not nesting on you, but…I shall refrain. I’m just thinking about having 97 pieces of glass in me, and it HURTS.
But I just gotta know: what did you tell the hospital staff and the repairmen?
I haven’t had a scary “spider in my pants” experience, but I did have an extra visitor in my drawers one day.
I was driving downtown with my brother one afternoon, and I felt something brush the hairs on my inside thigh. I thought it was a mild itch so I ignored it.
Then it happened again. I scratched at it.
Then it happen again, only now it was further up my leg. I scratched again at the moving itch. (You know how they are, you scratch an itch, and it immediately pops up somewhere else.)
Then it happened again, even closer to my crotch than before. I scratched hard and… ow!
Geezdamnit, what’s goin… OWW! OWW!!!
At this point the car is weaving wildly down the road as I frantically beat and claw at my leg with both hands in an attempt to keep whatever it is away from my genitals. I slam on the brakes and bring the car to a halt, still in traffic.
“What’s going on?” my brother asks.
“There’s something in my pants besides me!” I scream.
I stumble as I exit and end up lying in the street on my back as I tear my pants off. There, on the inside of my thigh, making a beeline for my crotch, was a very large earwig.
It’s no black widow, but gee-whiz, it’s bad enough insects make their way into my home. Can’t they at least stay out of my clothes?
–Patch
Good Lord. I have a horrible phobia of spiders, and if I had found a black widow on my stomach, gotten myself bloody, and then found it on my HAND, I think there would be a strong possibility of my giving myself a broken wrist trying to shake it off.
Sad but true story: I was fourteen and sleeping over at a friend’s house. Typical teenage-girl sleepover party, stayed up late and slept in sleeping bags in the basement.
Woke up around eleven and fumbled for my glasses, then looked around me only to see a massive spider sitting quite contentedly on my friend’s chest, since she was still in a happy slumber.
I can evidently do a good impression of an air raid siren.
“OH MY GOD THERE’S A SPIDER ON YOUR CHEST OH MY GOD OH MY GOD!” I was too freaked out to move and sat raptly watching her wake up and stare at the eight-legged monstrosity on her chest. She flicked it off and it ran like the damn wind into a corner. I picked myself up and ran up the stairs, where I remained until my friends sounded the all-clear that the spider had been safely killed.
I am truly envious of the writing talent of Payton’s Servant. What an addition to the SDMB!
It was funny, because the nurse that helped treat me in the ER is a good friend of our family, so she just laughed for about 5 minutes and said, "Just wait until I tell this one at the Christmas party this year." 
I just told the repairman that I slipped, omitting any details about the spider, as he gets the semi-heeby jeebys around them.
The really fun part was explaining what happened to my dad just after he got back from Hawaii. He had that bleary, I got 2 1/2 hours of sleep on the plane, then I had to drive 2 hours home look, and I could tell that he stopped listening to me about 4 minutes in.
So, I waited until the next morning at breakfast and told him everything. When I finished, he looked at my stitched up self, then looked at the bills and receipts for the repairs, then back to me and he said, "*C’mon. Now, what * really happened? You had a party didn’t you? It’s okay, you can tell me." :smack:
After 10 minutes of going back and forth about my having/not having a party, he wanted to know why I hadn’t held on the spider.:eek: 
I took 3 regular breaths and said in a calm, steady voice, "*Gee, I don’t know. Maybe because I was too busy * going insane.
I’ll bet you’ll never look at a spider the same way again.
Just an FYI, I sent this to my niece (she has severe arachnophobia). Her typing just hit the skids.
Holy fuck!! I’m pretty sure I would have died if I were you. I am aoooooo acared of spiders that if I see one close to me, I essentially freeze in place for a good five minutes, staring at it. It one actually manages to get on me, well, let’s just say it’s not a pretty sight. A twenty year-old guy flailing his amrs yelling “ahhhhh!! SPider! get if off! Get it off!” in a high pitech voice is not a thing you want to see. Especailly since it never actually manages to get the spider off, it just seems to anger it and make it latch on tighter.
Man, I’m never going inot the bathroom again…or wearing pants.
Hello, **Payton’s Servant! ** I’m **Persephone, ** and I’m one of the editors of the SDMB online magazine, Teemings.
With your permission, I’d really like to put this in the Teemings Extras section. I mean, I’d reallyreallyreallyreallyREALLY like to put it there.
After I stop spazzing with horror, that is. :eek:
Holy sweet screaming Jeezuz on a motorbike! Every millimeter of my body is freaking out right now. I have the crawling HeeBeeJeeBees and a bad case of the Shivers.
I am convinced, despite any and all evidence to the contrary, that spders are horrible creatures with evil intent and that the mere mention of their species causes them to perk up their little spder ears and hatch nefarious plans against me. I know that the spirit of a dead spder will leave its body and return to its nest, where it will reenact scene one of Hamlet and send its bazillions of spder children out for vengeance (this is why the WryGuy has bug duty - they can come and get revenge on HIM.)
Although I have a tremendous amount of sympathy, yea, even empathy, for your experience, I will tell you something: If I do not get to sleep tonight, Payton’s Servant I am driving over to your house first thing in the morning and I am going to make that sp*der look like Mary Freekin’ Poppins.
I feel your pain, Payton’s Servant. Well, not the pain of 97 glass shards in your shoulder, but something like it. 
By the way, I couldn’t help but notice a lot of product placement in your post. Are you planning to turn this into a movie?
But now, you have to ask yourself…
Where did that thing come from??
Was it…already in your clothes basket? Possibly laying eggs in other pants of yours…?
Was it…on the bathroom floor where you first dumped your clothes? Possibly laying eggs in the corners and crevices…?
Or maybe…just maybe…was it somewhere near the seat of the toilet, spreading it’s spidery self all over where you are supposed to rest your bare butt?
Could this happen to you…again?
[Cue ominous music]
Well, that beats any and every spider story I hope to ever be able to tell… The worst I’ve had so far was late one night when I was sitting at my desk (probably writing some incredibly inane and stupid post to the SDMB, in all honesty) and looked up to see this great big 4" spider crawling down the wall in front of me. :eek:
I do not do big spiders. Little spiders aren’t such a big deal, because they make a nice satisfying splat. Great big hairy spiders the size of my palm, I’m not so hot with.
The next thing I remember, I was standing on my chair thinking very unkind thoughts about the Almighty. If he had to make spiders, couldn’t he have made cute cuddly ones or something?
Standing on my chair in fear didn’t seem like a particularly productive way of dealing with the situation, but I was at a loss for how to squash a bug that big. Being creative (and also more than a little freaked out), I thought I’d go find an old textboox I no longer needed and see how hitting it with that worked.
When I came back into the room 30 seconds later… the spider was no where to be seen. I still don’t know how one misplaces a spider that big, but I did.
Did I mention that this was 11:30 at night? Did I mention that this was in my bedroom?
Did I mention that I didn’t sleep a wink for the next day and a half?
Payton’s Servant, what a wild and hysterical OP! I literally laughed out loud several times while reading it. The rest of the time I was squirmishing around in my chair. (Squirmish = a combo of squirm and sqeamish.)
I too have come face to face with black widows. When I was a child of about eleven or twelve, I was taking a nap on the family sofa on a Sunday afternoon. At some point I turned over facing the back of the sofa. As I turned, I barely opened my eyes and realized that I was nose to nose with a spider. I screamed for my mother to come and kill it. “Ask your father,” she said – out of sheer habit. My Dad killed it and took it to the kitchen to show it to my mother. He flipped it over to show her the red hour glass. I hope that she felt guilty. My mother didn’t sell that sofa for the next forty-five years, but I never slept on it again.
I did develop a fascination with black widow spiders after that. They became a sort of talisman. I bragged to my friends about the encounter. I went to a Halloween party as a black widow spider. I have black widow dangling earrings and pins. I became a Widow Warrior!
Then last year I saw one in my bedroom window. The window was open. I summoned the husband who sprayed it with spider-killer spray. I watched it die. And there it hangs to this day. It has dried up quite a bit but the last time I checked, I could still make out the hour glass. My grandchildren are impressed.
YET! BBBBUUUUAAAAAWWWWWWJAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
“The itsy bitsy spider climbed up the water spout…”
:eek:
I’m typing this response with my nose as both my hands are covering the family jewels at this moment.
I used to play with Black Widows when I was a kid in Southern California.
They don’t fetch very well.
As I am typing this, there is a small, half-inch long jumping spider on the wall.
I’m on the verge of freaking out and yelling for my Dad to kill it.
And this is from a girl who likes to catch and play with daddy-long-legs, worms, as many nonpoisonous bugs/beetles/creepycrawlies as she can.
<i>DAAAAADDDDYYYYYYYY!!!</i>
Aack. See, it even screws up my coding. :smack:
Oh, Payton, sweet jebus that was funny.
Except the slicing yourself to ribbons bit. That wasn’t funny.
Of course, without any further ado, let me recount my most memorable encounter with a spider:
I’d been feeling pretty tired and decided to go to bed early. MaxWife decided to stay up and watch TV. An hour or so after I’d drifted off to sleep, I heard MaxWife open the bedroom door and assumed she was finally coming to bed.
She left the light off but shook me awake. “Max!”, she hissed, “Max! There’s a spider!”. Now, to put this in context, MaxWife had never been terribly good at dealing with insects or arachnids. “There’s a spider!” could just as easily have applied to a 2mm spider as it could’ve referred to Spiderman himself.
As tired as I was, I wasn’t too interested in getting up to deal with what would undoubtedly be a pitiful little penny spider. But she just wouldn’t let up! “Get up! Get up! There’s a spider in here!”.
Argh. So I switched on my bedside light and let my sleep-filled, bleary eyes regain focus. And focus they did. On the world’s LARGEST. SPIDER. EVER. It was sitting on the cupboard door, not even a metre from me. I kid you not, this thing was the size of a dinner plate.
Normally eloquent and well-spoken, I was reduced to saying “Oh fuck.” as I slowly backed away from it, hoping it hadn’t seen me. I had to concede that, on this occasion, MaxWife did the right thing by waking me. The thought of that thing crawling on me in my sleep gave me the heebiejeebies.
To shed a bit of light on the situation, MaxWife decided that would be a good time to switch on the bedroom light. This prompted MaxMutt to wake from his slumber to find out what all the excitement was about.
MaxMutt has ideas that he’s a hunter. He took one look at this spider and decided it must fall victim to his evil dog instincts. Thankfully, MaxWife grabbed his collar just in time as he lunged towards the spider. It reared up on its legs and I swear I saw it gnashing its fangs at us!
In between squealing like a little girl and backing into the furthest corner, I thought “AHA! I have insect spray! That’ll fix this thing’s little red wagon!”.
In retrospect, I should’ve realised that this beast had probably grown as large as it had by developing quite a resistance to bug spray. Nevertheless, I took the (already half-empty) can and sprayed. And sprayed. And sprayed. It ran around the cupboard door, merely irritated at the sensation of the spray on its body. I sprayed enough stuff on this spider that it looked like I’d sprayed it with shaving cream. And still it continued merrily on its way, laughing at us for daring to use inferior bug spray.
In the absence of a thermonuclear weapon, I decided to empty the can on it. What a joke! It decided it had had enough of being sprayed and ran across the wall and under the door into the study. Oh crap! That’s the room that houses all my computer gear. I do NOT want that beast in there!
Meanwhile, MaxWife was cowering in the other corner of the bedroom while MaxMutt tried to convince us all of his viciousness.
So, just to make sure we know what the situation is: 1 MaxWife, whimpering for the arachnid horror to end, 1 MaxMutt barking his nuts off, 1 bug-spray-wielding Max and 1 very pissed off spider running into the study.
MaxWife’s adrenalin must’ve kicked in at that point, because she tore into the kitchen, retrieved a straw broom and stormed into the study, wielding it like a spear.
It was my turn to cower in fear, while simultaneously keeping MaxMutt out of the action. MaxWife found the spider, which, evidently, must’ve been feeling a bit woozy. She bashed it on the head with the business end of the broom. AND STILL IT CONTINUED RUNNING!!!
What evils we must have performed in a previous life to deserve this accursed eight-legged fiend in our home!
Finally she grabbed the broom and pounded the spider with the bristles. And there its spidery life ended, trapped in the broom’s bristles. I never knew MaxWife had it in her to beat such a formidable foe.
The joy doesn’t end there. We now had a corpse to get rid of. Not the sort of thing you simply wrap in a piece of newspaper and put in the kitchen bin for later disposal.
No. This thing deserved an immediate funeral in the wheelie bin. MaxWife ran outside, holding the broom at arm’s length, opened the bin and whacked the broom on its end.
The spider landed in the empty bin with a loud, sickening, wet THUD.
Urgh. Even now, years after the fact, that story makes me cringe.
On another note, I used to keep a redback (I think that’s what you had in your pants, Payton) as a pet. I kept it in a little vial and every other day I’d feed it a moth. I used to switch the verandah light on and wait for moths to flit around the light. Many of them would settle on the verandah’s fly-screen sliding door. I’d find a likely candidate, remove the lid to “Fang’s” vial, then swiftly place the vial over the moth. It would fly around frantically for brief moments until Fang ran up to it and sank its fangs in. The moths died very quickly. It was kind of interesting to watch.
That was back in the days of life as a uni student who wasn’t allowed to have a real pet. Aren’t you glad I have MaxMutt now???
Max