SPIDERS! Right out of a horror movie....

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

I remember once that I had drawn a picture of a giant demon-spider thing. I was impressed at the results, so I started showing it to everyone (y’know, one of those ego-boosting “Ain’t I great?” things that kids do). But when I showed it to this one girl, she took one glance and freaked. “Gah! Spiders!” she yelped, and tossed the picture on the floor. She then proceeded to backpedal hastily and wound up slamming into the wall.

I was laughing really hard, but I know I shouldn’t have… I mean, hell, I’m as arachnophobic as the next guy ('specially when I see a spider crawling down the wall of the bathroom when I’m sitting on the pot… lemme shit in peace, wouldja?!?).

22

Black Widows? Not even close. What you said, Thea, about the hazard to a child is true. But that just shows they’re not one of the deadliest.

I think the Australian Box Jellyfish is high on the list of deadliest creatures.

23

Ugh…this is terrible. My nice, comfy night has been turned into a heeby-jeeby night of thinking I have spiders just waiting for the chance to bite me.

I live in Queensland and we have golden orb weaver spiders EVERYWHERE. You get rid of a web, and they come back half an hour later with a brand new web. One morning I was walking to the car and walked straight into the middle of a golden orb spider’s web with the spider in it. I freaked out [as you do] shudder evil, evil creatures.

I always wonder, why do you think it is that humans are so deathly afraid of spiders?

24

Took off a ceiling fan’s lighting fixture, & was drowned in a river of carpenter ants flowing out of the ceiling.
I still get the creeps when I go to change a lightbulb.

25

Time: sometime during the spring or summer of 1975 or 6.
Place: Dixon, CA.
Astroboy was: 11 or 12 years old.

I was lying in bed, slowly waking up. I was sleepily observing a patch of sunlight on the wall near my head, when I noticed that there were shadows flitting through the patch of sunlight. ‘That’s weird,’ I thought. I got out of bed and went to the window. In the back yard, I saw a multitude of cotton-candy/ cloud-fallen-to-earth strands of something or other floating around…

Intrigued, I wandered out to the back yard in my jammies. And started catching some of these strands of stuff floating around in my hands!

Observing them closely (I began my quest to eliminate ignorance at an early age, apparently), I noticed that these strands were absolutely crawling with mites! Again, weird!

Within the space of about 2 or 3 minutes, I had thousands of mites crawling all over my hands and up my arms… how cool, but weird!

My father (the entomologist) appeared in the doorway, coffee mug in hand. “Dad!” I said, “Check this out! What is it?” (at the time, my father knew everything… still does, come to think of it!:wink: )

He took a leisurely sip of coffee, and said, “Black widows are ballooning.”

This took a few seconds to sink in as I watched thousands of them swarm up my arms, fangs suddenly bared and glistening with venom…:eek:

The rest of that day is a blur, though I seem to recall running for the garage with the idea of soaking myself with gasoline and striking a match…

26

Feh! You wimps.

Spiders are the only kinds of “bugs” that I can tolerate. They’re fascinating, in a shark-like kinda way.

But we’re a thousand times bigger than they are (ok, you Ozzies excepted). One flick of our little finger is enough to kill most of 'em. Any spider you’re likely to encounter is no threat whatsoever.

Now, earwigs and silverfish - those make my skin crawl and my breakfast turn over in my stomach. They’re just gross.

Heck, last night an especially big, fat housefly landed on the TV screen as I was eating a chicken salad sandwich, and I lost my appetite.

Hopefully one of my resident spiders caught that fat ugly thing before it could breed.

27

GingerOf TheNorth – I too used to exist in smug satisfaction that “up here” we don’t have any huge nasty spiders.

I am here to tell you I was very, very wrong.

I was out on a canoe trip with friends and was just sitting, sunning myself on some rocks while I watched them cliff-dive.

Obviously it was a beautiful, hot day, because I was not the only one sunning myself. I looked down and saw this:

http://www.st-abbs.fsnet.co.uk/insects/mounts/framed_nursery.htm

:eek:

They are known as a “nurseryweb” or “dock” spider. They do bite and are known to be quite aggressive. They can swim.

The one I saw was almost larger in span than my hand (about 7 inches from thumbtip to pinky), it doesn’t compare to a tarantula for impressiveness, but it’s still pretty yucky.

As for a “being covered in bugs story” my fiancé used to install alarm systems. His co-worker Fred was called to an address with a motion-detector that was falsing. He reached up over his head and popped the cover off.

Immediately a surprisingly large number of cockroaches fell out and scrambled across his face and around his shoulders, neck and chest.

EWWW!

28

I hate and loathe and despise and mistrust spiders. Any spider within my line of sight has less than a minute to live. I think they are among the most unnatural creatures, a multi-eyed monster with eight (too many!) legs and craps silk. Gah.

I also think they’re sneaky little bastards.

As a child, I lived in Florida. In the backyard, we had a number of orange tress. The nearest one to the house was my personal favorite, and I climbed it so often that I knew the layout of every branch. I could have climbed that thing blindfolded.

When I was about seven or eight, I decided to get the bright idea of seeing how quickly I could go from the ground to the top. Lacking a stopwatch, I would just count off the seconds to myself.

I begin.

A little too quickly, perhaps. About halfway up, my foot slips, and my crotch lands onto a branch with a particular amount of force just enough to remind me that I’m male. As I’m gasping, I glance upwards to see how much further I would have needed to go.

Directly above me, by mere inches, was a spider web. In the middle was a black widow spider. There was no mistaking the red hourglass marking on its belly. I was only a mere instant from crashing into that web. Had I not slipped, I would have had a black widow somewhere on my head, and the critter would not have been in the best mood.

I forgot about the pain in my groin. I backed out of the tree, went into the house, got a pair of shoes, climbed back up, and banged that little monster to death between the shoes. I then cleared out the web.

I never saw another spider web in that tree again, and I never climbed it again without always looking ahead to where I was going.

29

A “surprisingly large number of cockroaches,” Poysyn?! I’m thinking any number of cockroaches falling out of something and onto my face is too many, period.

If we may share roach stories… a good friend of mine once told me of the time she was drifting off to sleep, enjoying her nice soft sheets… stretched out her hand… and felt little legs running across it!

She jerked into full consciousness to find what some of us in NYC like to call a “waterbug.” They’re actually humongous roaches, but we don’t like to admit that. She says she beat the thing to death, then called her at-the-time boyfriend (who was far, far away, like in a different timezone far away). The boyfriend failed to recognize the deadly peril my friend was in; I’m convinced his indifference contributed to their eventual break-up.

30

This topic reminds me of this thread:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=25367

::sniff::

31

I used to be pretty much take-or-leave with spiders, as much as with any bug, anyway. Things changed pretty darn quick after an incident that happened in highschool.
I was making out on the livingroom floor with my girlfriend. She was on top, and squeeked, then brushed at her shoulder. Flinging a daddy-longlegs right into my mouth.
Now, I dislike spiders. If they are inside, they become squished. If they are outside, I run away. If they are daddy-longlegs, I have been seen crouched in a corner, throwing books at the damn thing because I am not going over there, but it must die!
Horrid, evil, nasty (and they don’t taste good, either!!)

shudders

32

I’ve passed a death sentence for all spiders in my vicinity. If it’s too much trouble to kill them, they get a stay of execution, but they still die.

I prescribe fire, and lots of it.

33

OK, so you’ve got your Sydney funnel web spider, your golden orb weaver, your cone snail(?), your taipan, your box jellyfish…

All, as near as I can figre, native to Australia. And isn’t there a species of very small octopus that is highly venomous and Australian? Or am I mistaken about its country of origen.

So, it’s not enough that Australia and some of the larger islands that surround it breed wierd things like the platypus,the echidna and assorted marsupials. How come, if you ticked off a list of the ten most venomous creatures on earth, about nine and a half of them are Australian in origen? What is it about the land down under that breeds such poisonous critters? And how can you Aussies stand to live there, in constant fear of being bitten by something…?

34

Australia also has …get this!..

A poisonous shark.

A shark that has poison.

talk about overkill.

35

Spiders’ve never bothered me. I’m always the one escorting them outside (at home, work, school, etc) whenever one appears. Why kill them? They don’t mean me harm, usually, and they take care of flies and mosquitos and junk. I never kill spiders, though the SO would like me to. She wants the world rid of them. I say, I’d rather have them than bajillions of mosquitos.
Once when I was carrying one, he stopped crawling. So I took a good look at him. I could see his little jaws working, trying to bite me, but he wasn’t nearly strong enough. I found it rather amusing. The people I tried to show it to did not. :smiley:
That spider was with me for a few hours. I liked him. He had a tiny little white butt, and he kept trying to kill me. His name was Bitey. My classmates think I’m a freak. They’re probably right.
Unrelated tangent; this is why i like people like LNO.

36

Now here’s a big spider.
http://www.aldex.co.uk/aspr/aps4.htm

Megarachne servinei (spider)

A new family, Megarachnidae Araneida, had to be established when this beautfully detailed giant spider was discovered. Found in rocks of the Upper Carboniferous in St. Louis Province, Argentina, it represents the largest known spider ever to have walked on Earth.

Living some 300 million years ago, it had a 15mm (0.5") circular eye containing three pairs of lenses at the centre of its head. The length of this specimen is 34cm (16"): it would have had a leg span of some 50cm (20")!
and in the modern age…
http://www.wildchannel.com/features/goliath1.htm

Fully grown, the Goliath Bird Eater can reach a leg span of 12 inches across - the size of a large dinner plate. It originates from South America, in particular Surinam, Brazil, Guyana and Venezuela where it burrows in damp earth in marshy swamp areas.

The Goliath (Theraphosa blondi) is a drab dark and light brown in colour. Its incredible size makes it the world’s largest tarantula.

http://www.razzmatazz.demon.nl/spin/spin/blondi.htm

37

Every so often, I see a spider descending down from the ceiling via a string of webbing. Well, I can’t tolerate that - the little bastards have invaded my house and are attempting a Death From Above maneuver - so I search for a weapon to deal with the aggressor. Well… in our house, we have hundreds upon hundreds, if not thousands, of books. Old books. Books nobody reads. So I grab one of these books, open it up to a random page, and WHAM!!!.. there’re now probably two dozen books lying about our house with a dead spider squished in the middle of it.

“Of course you realize this means war.”

38

WHY? Why do I keep clicking links in this thread? Aaaaaauuugh!

Hate spiders hate spiders hate spiders hate spiders

39

OK, everybody, please join me in singing the arachnophobe international anthem, as originally recorded by The Who.
What’s that crawling up my wall
Black and hairy, very small
Now he’s up above my head
Hanging by a little thread

Boris the spider…
Boris the spider…

Now he’s crawling 'cross the floor
Headed for the bedroom door
Maybe he’s as scared as me
Where’s he gone now, I can’t see

Boris the spider…
Boris the spider…

Creepy, crawly, creepy, crawly
Creepy, creepy, crawly crawly
Creepy, creepy, crawly, crawly

There he is wrapped in a ball
Doesn’t seem to move at all
Perhaps he’s dead, I’ll just make sure
Pick this book up off the floor

Boris the spider…
Boris the spider…

Creepy, crawly, creepy, crawly
Creepy, creepy, crawly, crawly, crawly
Creepy, creepy, crawly, crawly, crawly

He’s come to a sticky end
Don’t think he will ever mend
Never more will he crawl 'round
He’s embedded in the ground

Boris the spider…
Boris the spider…

40

I have been covered with spiders once (well, there were a few), buit that wasn’t as bad as when I was a kid delivering newspapers. I commonly would feel a single strand of a web fall across my nose as I walked between two trees in the early morning, and though I hated it I was used to it.

But then one morning I walked into a full web, face on, and it was like a someone draping a towel over my face. To this day, it still gives me the creeps.