Goddamnit I hate spiders!!!!!

The BBQ Pit
41

The strangest spider I had ever seen was in my very first apartment.
I was watching TV and heard a chirping sound sort of like what a cricket makes. I looked up, and to my horror three feet from me on the wall was the biggest spider I have ever seen. It’s body was about the size of a nickle, with hairy legs, and it was yellow and black. Like a yellowjacket without wings. It looked at me with huge, malice filled eyes and chirped at me again. Needless to say I screamed like a little girlie and ran around the room. It was right near the door out, so I opened it (It skittered toward me as I opened the door too) and backed away. It eventually walked out of the door and I never saw it again.

My friend thought I was nuts or on some kind of drugs when I told him about the spider that chirped at me.

42

Got something special for ya. Where I work we have those drop celings that hide all the cables and ducts. Dark, plenty of places to hide…spider heaven. A couple of months ago, apparently I was lucky enough to have an egg sack hatch right above my area and the babies felt like visiting me all through the day. Usually by descending on webbing right onto my head or dangling in front of my face before dropping into my lap. Ever had a 2 week case of the heebie jeebies? It’s not fun. Furry little sneaky rat bastards.

43

I remember when my girlfriend was vacationing in India she told me about a spider she saw chillin’ in the tub in her hotel room that was horrifyingly grotesque for the following reasons:

1)It was the size of the palm of her hand.
2)It was not hairy. This may seem like a good thing, but imagine a brown and white mottled spider that has a dull shine about it. Mull over that one as you go to sleep…
3)Opal can blow me.
4)She could see its eyes glittering in the lights.

Ugh…

Y’know, if there was ONE thing that could make me more grateful about being able to waz standing up…

44

Is that why you sat in the opposite corner from me at the January Dope Fest?

----:p/
----///\\

If we ever end up having that next one at our house, you have to leave your lighter outside.

45

I’ll leave my lighter outside, but I’m carrying the flamethrower in with me. It’s for my own protection.

46

You know, I really, really didn’t need to check up on this thread before I go camping.

LNO, my usual requirement that a guy must be able to smash bugs now has a small exception. A guy must be able to smash or burn bugs. I like that in a man.

47

Now that the thunderstorms have gone away for a few hours and I can safely hook up the modem again …

Happy to oblige.

No. :slight_smile:

Not in Calgary.

At least not that I’ve ever heard of, in the wild. If your weather is anything like the weather in Boundary County, Idaho, that’s probably got something to do with it.

There’s no accounting for some wackos’ taste in house pets, now, but that’s a separate matter.

Okay, did anyone really think I could just let it go at that? Hell, I’m on a roll here.

One potentially ugly customer did apparently make it as far as Saskatchewan in a bunch of bananas some time back. Please note, though, that it’s happily deceased now.

That would have been this guy. I’m not personally familiar with any of the Brazilian species, gosh darn my culturally deprived upbringing, but I’d bet on this one having been a phoneutria something-or-other. Admittedly that’s about one part self-semieducated guess and three parts willingness to believe that the folks at Royal Saskatchewan Museum have access to better resources than I do, presumably including real live professional entomologists. (Now, if they asked the Aussies exclusively rather than bringing their Brazilian colleagues into the loop, one would be justified in wondering why.)

Actually, I could ask my brother for input. He lived in Belo Horizonte for a couple of years and knows more about Ctenidae (not a tpyo) than I do. Not coincidentally, he doesn’t like 'em worth a shit.

Some members of that family are bad news. If this little stowaway was a Brazilian wandering spider (p. fera) as its captors suspect, that would be really rather disturbing. Attitude-wise, p. fera tend to be marginally mellower than–for instance–the justly infamous Sydney funnel-web, but this is a bit like noting that a pit bull with hemorrhoids is less hostile than a boy raised by wolverines.

The bad news is that, in terms of venom toxicity, the wandering spider is widely regarded as being even nastier than the Aussie competition. Actually, FWIW and IIRC, the folk at Guinness have enshrined it formally as World’s Most Venomous Spider. Thank God for small favours, though, its delivery system isn’t in the same league as the funnel-web’s. That’s because the wandering spider basically amounts to a coked-out wolf spider on steroids, whereas the funnel-web is very conspicuously a mygalomorph (that’s a tarantula-type layout, for folks who don’t tend to wax geeky on this stuff). Nobody without a death wish really wants to get bitten by either one, though.

Finally, I should reapeat: This specimen never got anywhere near Calgary.

And I reiterate: It’s dead now.

48

Twenty posts so far, and I’d swear half of them are in one thread.

<cartman> In the fucking Pit, at that. Well, fuck it. At least I can say ‘fuck’ here. </cartman>

Now that’s out of the way:

Stoid, if you haven’t gotten too creeped out to still be hanging around this thread, please note the following.

The brown recluse is not aggressive. Furthermore, not every bite has reasults as disgusting as the more conspicuous cases. Sometimes the spider injects no venom at all; other times it does, but in a quantity insufficient to do major damage. Numbers are hard to come by on this, because in such cases little to nothing happens, and the victim often remains unaware of having been bitten.

That’s intended as actual reassurance, and I hope it’s taken that way.

49

Hey, you guys, look at this! Catherine Zeta-Jones hardcore pornography pics! Hurry up and look, before the mods take away the link!

50

OK, I already feel bad about that link. Don’t look if you don’t like spiders. (You probably figured that out on your own, right?)

Actually, I quickly clicked off that page as the photos loaded. I am a certified arachnophobe myself. Perhaps not as bad as some people, but …

Show me a snake? I’ll go and grab it. Ditto a mouse.

Show me a spider, oh, dime-sized or bigger, and I’ll freak.

DarkPrince - I had one crawl across my cheek as I laid on the couch one night several weeks ago. I didn’t get much sleep that night.

boomvark - Guess where I’m going on vacation in a month? Brazil. ::gulp::

I have been assured that aranhas are not a problem where I am going. I’m sure I’ll sleep with one eye open, anyway.

Could be worse. I could be going to Sri Lanka, where they have spiders that get the size of dinner plates and catch birds in their webs. Thinking about that one too much will put an arachnophobe into therapy.

The way spiders look, the way they move … yeesh. My skin is crawling and I’m pulling my feet up off the ground just thinking about it.

One thing we can all be thankful for: three words - no flying spiders.

My life would be over, were it otherwise.

51

“No flying spiders”

Thanks, Milossarian, now I’ll have something NEW to add to my nightmares!!!

It just occurred to me to wonder why I keep reading this thread! I have the creepy crawlies for a good 30-60 minutes afterward. You’d think I’d have the sense to stop!

Maybe it’s like an accident scene…the curiosity is just too much! :slight_smile:

52

Dammit Milossarian, people who post links like that advertizing it as porn need to die. :stuck_out_tongue:

Oh, and about the flying spiders, don’t forget that when the little shits hatch they float around like little blood-sucking angels on the breeze. :eek:

53

Dammit, yes I’m incompetent, yes I cannot make a damn smiley work, yes you can all laugh at me.

Goes off into a corner and cries softly to himself

54

One thing to note about the recluse. A researcher at the University of Missouri-Kansas City is proposing a theory that people in the South and Midwest that are bitten by brown recluses will fall into two different categories of reaction.

He believes that over time, a natural immunity of sorts is built up to the toxins of the recluse, and that this immunity is passed on to offspring. Thus, he believes that people are much more often bitten by recluses than reported, but the ill effects seem to mainly affect those who 1) are not from the South or Midwest originally, and/or 2) whose parents were not bitten repeatedly during their lives.

I wish I could find a link, but the Ex did do a research project on this during her Med School training, and the conclusions pointed pretty heavily towards there being a direct relationship between being “foreign” to the area and being badly affected by the bites.

55

This is interesting. It’s also plausible and well worth investigating further, which I hope someone is still doing.

Wow. I’m gonna Google this with vigor.

If you do find a link, would you please post it?

56

I say we take off and nuke the site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.

57

But these are spiders we’re talking about! They would just sneak in the door of the space craft and sit waiting in a corner until you’re doing your victory dance, then you’d turn around and notice them sitting there, little multiple eyes glittering, fangs dripping slavering venom…

Anyway, thanks for the info, boomvark. So, as long as I don’t bring home any spiders with the bananas, we’re okay. Got it.

58

I have found some additional recluse information, but no positive link to what I had before. If I didn’t think the Ex would kill me, I would ask her for a copy of her report.

“ulceration occurs in about 37% of bites - but in that study only 3% required skin grafting” - Clinical presentation and outcome of brown recluse spider bite. Wright, S.W.,et al, Ann Emerg Med, 30(1):28-32, 1997 July

“The Brown Recluse (Loxosceles reclusa) is generally regarded as one of the more dangerous creatures in North America. Six deaths were attributed to it between 1960 and 1969, two more than the infamous Black Widow Spider (Latrodectus mactans). However, these numbers pale in consideration with the 112 people who lost their lives during the same period of time to bee, wasp, and ant stings.” - Botes, D.P., T. C. K., W.W., and Sarver, E. W. 1989. Comparitive morphology of the poison apparatus of Loxosceles reclusa (Gertsch and Mulaik), Latrodectus mactans (F.), Dugesiella hentzi (Girard) and Lycosa rabida (Walckenaer).

But I’ll also continue to try to find the real article I mentioned.

59

I will never forget the horror of the daddy longlegs at the Girl Scout camp I frequented as (surprise) a girl.

Most of the “tents” had canvas sides, but did have real roofs and floors. The daddy longlegs liked to gather in fuzzy-looking bunches on the ceiling. (I am getting goosebumps just thinking about this!) So all us girls would arrive at camp, start hauling our stuff into the tent and…

DADDY LONGLEG HELL! HELLLLLLLLLLLP!

We’d make some poor leader (somebody’s mother, usually!) get in there with brooms and sweep the bastards away. Not a one of us would set foot in there until the clumps were removed. But of course they couldn’t get all of the individual daddy longlegs…and occasionally during the night, they’d RUN ACROSS OUR FACES.

shudder

I don’t care if they’re harmless, when there are a million of them in a fuzzy-looking clump on the ceiling, they are fucking scary.

60

Went camping with a friend (at a fairly un-used campground) and for the most part we didn’t see many spiders around. We figured, “Hey, kickass…Maybe there aren’t any around here” because we’re both horrified of spiders. So night comes and we’re sitting at the picnic table thing roasting hot dogs and doing the usual camping thing, and I drop the ketchup. I bend down and grab the ketchup and glance up under the table and see DOZENS of fat white spiders on the underside of the table/bench thing. I DOVE out from the bench and rolled away and shouted “Holy crap! Get away from the table, man!!”

My friend, having no idea what I was talking about, played the ever amusing game of “What? What is something wrong? The table? What ABOUT the table?” while grinning. I pointed and said to look underneath and moments later he was standing beside me dancing and frantically asking “Are they on me?!”

Never seen a white spider before…they were relatively small, but fat. No idea if they were hairy (like we were gonna’ get THAT close, heh…what if they could jump or something?) but I’m pretty sure they weren’t. They seemed more like…uhh…spikey. Like little throwing stars or something, heh…But very FAT. Having never seen them before, we of course assumed they were poisonous, out to get us, and wanted to lay eggs under our skin. They were fat, and we figured that was because they either had a bunch of poison in their bellies, or a bunch of baby spiders that would crawl into our ears and stuff in the night.

Anyway, being too afraid to even reach for the food and such off the table lest the spiders be on the side we couldn’t see and crawl onto our arms 3 at a time…we devised a plan to kill the evil little things so we could quit freaking out. We sprayed bug spray on the end of a long stick and lit it on fire, effectively creating a crude flame thrower, and roasted many of them. One tried attacking us by crawling along the ground (where we couldn’t see it) towards us. It made the mistake of going into a small clearing and we sprayed it like mad with bug spray, and my friend took the flaming stick and stabbed at the thing.

I will never…EVER…as long as I live, forget the popping sound the thing made. It was like popping a bubble when you’re chewing gum. Anyway, we didn’t sit at the table anymore, heh…

These things were nowhere to be seen during the day, which made it worse…the next day we figured they were all gone, but that night there were more, in the same places we looked during the day.

We don’t go camping anymore, heh. Too much excitement. We found these spiders hanging in the trees beside our tent entrances as well…you wouldn’t believe how long it took us to work up the nerve to dive into the tent in the dark and slip into sleeping bags with no idea what was waiting inside them…

  • Tsugumo (shouldn’t have read this thread…I keep feeling little spiders all over me now)