Which has now evolved into terrorizing the tourists into looking carefully before they sit down, even on indoor toilets. I always looked for spiders before I sat, in our hotel room in Sydney and in all the public toilets I went to.
If I see any huge spiders here, you will hear the screams from Australia. You’ll probably also notice if I get my way on killing the thing, and get to slam a 500-kilometer asteroid into the Earth to squish it. I suppose I could use one of these if there were no 500-kilometer asteroids available, but it wouldn’t be nearly good enough.
I am blindingly terrified of five things: clowns, water (standing bodies), frogs, angels, and cave crickets. Screaming, running-away terrified. There are places at work I refuse to go into because I have on good authority that they are lairs for cave crickets. Being a native Bostonian, it’s been difficult to explain to my family what one of these bastards look like- I describe them as a cross between a cricket and a spider who got possessed by a Terminator- so I just wait until the fam decides to get on a plane and come visit so Mr. Kitty can give them the CC experience.
Brothers and sisters, we must band in solidarity to resist the media’s attempt to foist its brand of arachno-syndicalism on the people’s revolutionary movement…
We have brown recluses here in Cincinnati. In fact, just this past week my co-worker was hospitalized briefly after being bitten by one. She is meeting with the surgeon this week to repair the gaping wound in her finger. She saved the squashed spider and it was verified that it was, indeed, a brown recluse.
Another friend was hospitalized for over a week after being bitten by what they assumed to be a brown recluse. Her arm became necrotic and it wasn’t responding to antibiotics, so they had to put her on an IV drip. This happened about 5 years ago.
And finally another co-worker’s daughter was hospitalized just last summer after sleeping outside on a trampoline. Once again, they assume she was bitten by a a brown recluse from the bullseye wound that turned necrotic. She’s fine now but it was seriously hairy for a few days because they were afraid her organs were going to fail. It turned out okay but it took her several weeks to get her fever down and energy back, and then she caught every virus around because of her weakened immune system.
Living in New Mexico I got to be somewhat fond of the spiders that came by. Some were scary when I couldn’t identify them, but when I finally could they were ok because I knew they protected me from other insects. Particularly Daddy Long Legs.
I knew a guy here in the Chicago area who got bit by a brown recluse and had an IV that he wore while he did his daily life. Supposedly it pumped it directly to his heart or something. Quite scary.
And I knew a woman who had extensive skin grafts due to a spider bite. I hate the little bastids with every fiber of my being. Yes, I know they serve a purpose, but I’m a’feared of 'em.
Oh God, cave crickets are actually WORSE than spiders, if that’s possible. I hate hate hate hate hate spiders, but I can just about manage to kill one if my apartment has been invaded and my roommate’s not home. (If he is home, all bets are off, and I will drag him bodily out of his room if need be to stomp the spider’s eight-legged bazillion-eyed web-spinning ass.) Cave crickets are, I am certain, Satan’s favorite insect. The horror starts with the name–CAVE crickets. Come on! Nothing good comes out of caves! Monsters come out of caves! Monsters and bugs! Monstrous bugs!
Those things are pure evil. I mean, the way they’ll just go leaping out at you while you’re innocently trying to do your laundry or whatever–look, Cave Cricket, I didn’t do anything to you! Leave me the fuck alone! I’m just trying to wash some clothes! Stop jumping at me! Especially in the unfinished tiny basement of my dilapidated university house! And for the love of everything don’t leap into people’s HAIR. One of my roommates at the time had a cave cricket leap onto her head and her screaming fit was so loud you could have heard it in Vancouver. I thought someone had turned up in the basement with a knife, it was that loud.
So, I really really don’t like spiders, but cave crickets are sent straight from the Devil.
When my parents moved into the house they live in now, the basement was filled with cave crickets. One summer a toad moved into the basement. The cave cricket population suddenly fell from “see twelve every time you go downstairs” to “see one every week or so”. A couple of years after that a mother cat and her kittens moved in. I haven’t seen a cave cricket down there in about ten years.
Reminds me of the time a long-haired classmate of mine discovered that preying mantises can fly, but not alas very accurately.
She had to be physically restrained to remove the offending insect - a good four-incher. Little bastard could pinch, but not really hard enough to hurt.
So I guess you don’t want to hear about my recent caving trip, when I was crawling through a small passage, and I flashed my helmet light up and saw that the entire ceiling was a seething mass of cave crickets? Or that how they kind of freaked out when the light hit them, and started falling, en masse, onto my neck, and down my shirt? There must have been THOUSANDS of them, crawling all over each other.
