Yar Har Fiddle Dee Dee

[Andara Bledin]

But... but... if it weren't for spiders, we'd be overrun with mosquitos!

I actually like most spiders. Just not the shiny black ones. They give me the hind-brain heebie-jeebies.

I do spider rescue. I will grab a cup, a bit of paper, and capture and release them. We had one fat orb spinner that was obviously confused; it tried to spin it's orb in the doorway between the main office and the hall to the kitchen and accounting area.

I like honey bees, too. I'm not to keen on bumble bees after being stung by one. Bumble bees can sting more than once, too. I like to pet honey bees. They're actually rather calm, for an insect.

The bugs that really creep me out, though, are potato bugs, aka the Jerusalem cricket. I had one on my bare foot, once, and I totally freaked out. They can bite pretty hard, too, from what I've read.

The worst creepy crawly experience I've ever had, however, involved a June bug, possibly one of the stupidest insects ever to fly, creep, or crawl the earth. These beetles are so stupid, they can't figure out how to get off their backs. They will try to land on water.

One of the stupid things flew down the back of my pants one spring evening. Boy was that startling.

But the worst was the one that managed to get into my bedroom a few years back. I was in bed. I was woken by the sound of something hissing near my head. I started to get a bit agitated, so I lifted my head up, and the sound followed me. It was in my hair! That's when I freaked. I grabbed the ends of my hair, held it up away from my head and started yelling at Nekojin to turn on the light and "get it out! get it out!" If I'd known it was a stupid ass June bug, I wouldn't have flipped out. But when you've got something hissing in agitation only inches away from your head, rational thought doesn't get a whole lot of say.

I'm just glad I don't live where they have things like bullet ants, so named for how incredibly painful their bite is.

^-.-^

[Tria]

Although I'm much more restrained than the acquaintance who put a shotgun blast through the basement wall, trying to kill one . . .

I hate guns and I would've paid to see that.... Or at least get the full story.

[paige]

*shudder*

Picture it ... Florida ... 2004.

It's about 3am, and I'm sitting at the computer, reading forums, eating popcorn from a bowl. The house is dark except for the floor lamp next to the computer desk. From the corner of my eye, I see something on the floor in the hallway, crawling thisaway.

We have giant flying roaches here, pretty common in warm weather. I assumed it was one o' them and casually grabbed for one of the cans of wasp spray we keep just for the little monsters.

As It approached the edge of the light cast by the lamp upon the floor, a strange, sickening realization crept down my spine and squeezed the breath from my lungs. Too big for a roach ... Mouse? oh plz let it be a mouse oh plz oh plz oh plz! Mouses are cute and fuzzy and scareded of peoples and this THING was coming right at me!!

Nasty brown mo-fo jumped at me! Out of sheer panic, I threw the popcorn bowl and apparently stunned it. Immediately drowned it in a puddle of wasp spray and adrenaline.

When I caught my breath, I peeked at it. Body was larger than a US half-dollar and legs would have spread out larger than my hand. Have to admit, I nearly peed myself.

The closest pics I could find on google identified it as a brown recluse (although I always thought brown recluses were really small and, well, reclusive?).

This pic is nearly identical in terror-inducing appearance -- don't click if you're squeamish link

[Best Made Tacos]

Here in Oz we have little black spiders, about an inch long with a cigar shaped abdomen and a white streak on their back - not huge but with a rather poisonous (seriously, it nectrotises the flesh) and painful bite. They have a love of shoes, clothing and bathrooms. I was at my SO's house one day and say one scurrying across the carpet. No problem, I grab a thick paperback and whack it. Lift up the book - the spider is unharmed and scurrying angrily toward me.
Alright- I smack it again! Lift up the book and the spider is gone...what the? I peer more closely at the carpet and the damn thing rises up out of the fibers, unharmed!
The carpet was so thick, every time I hit it, it just sank into it and came back up, no damage done. I ended up stepping on it.

Another freaky story - we don't have many poisonous or large spiders in Victoria, where I live. Not many large spiders in Oz, full stop. However a friend of mine was once unpacking in a new house when she saw a spider with a black shiny carapace moving very fast across the floor - she tells me its body was 2 inches square, at least. They grab a street directory, which is bigger than an A4 sheet of paper and weighs about 3 kilos (3 inches high, too) and drop it on top of the beasty. Problem solved, right?
Nooooo.
The street directory rises off the floor and starts slowly moving towards the wall.
...
..
crap.
They killed it in the end but there wasn't enough left to identify it. But there's nothing that fits that description that is native to Australia. Scary.

Toilet Dolphin! Where can I get one? That would be so cool, it would go with my orangutan hatstand.

[Broomjockey]

Okay, I too have arachnaphobia, which has led to some interesting situations, ranging from an undeserved fit of hysterics over a tricky bit of lint, to a well deserved bitch session after my dad squished a spider hanging in front of me in his truck by smooshing it into my shirt.

One time, it was crawling on the ceiling, and I didn't want to get too close to it, so I grabbed my shoe (some of you may remember its size from another thread) and SMASHED it into the ceiling. I thought it was still twitching, so I smacked it another half-dozen times. Another one got demolecularized by my dirty sock. I grabbed the sock, grabbed it, and made like I was starting fire with two sticks. I then washed that sock 4 times before I'd wear it again.

And in non-spider related news, we had a bumper crop of crickets or something similar one year not long ago (they were brown and jumpy, that's all I really needed to know). They didn't scare me, but the buggers got everywhere. Some made it into the lobby of the theatre. And up onto the box office counter. Onto a brochure rack. Where I tried to shoo it away. Where it then jumped onto a woman's chest. Where I wated for the screaming/hysterics. All she did was give her shirt a quick flick/tug (hard to describe, but you probably know what I mean). I apologized, and we moved on.

[BusBus]

I'm getting goosebumps just reading this thread. I have some form of arachnophobia as well. I don't know why. It's just spiders that scare the living hell out of me. Luckily, we don't too many freaky deaky spiders here.

My spider stories.....

I use to live in a basement suite, so spiders were a somewhat regular occurence.

One time, I was taking a shower and I felt something on my leg. I looked down and there was a spider crawling along my leg. I managed to squish it inadvertently while screaming and jumping out of the shower in sheer fright.

Later on, I moved into an apartment building. It was in the summer, so I left my jacket on the floor in the basement suite while I carted my remaining belongings to my new place. Now, it is important to point out that, at the time, I had very long hair (down to my waist). It is also monstrously thick. Anyways, when we were done, I grabbed my jacket and put it on and left. Got to my new place, did a few things and then my friends and I left to go do something fun (can't remember what). While we were in the lobby, my friend suddenly starts swatting at me. I asked her what she is doing and it turns out that there is a spider crawling around in my hair. We finally managed to get it out. I do believe that it hitched a ride on my jacket from my old place, onto my jacket, and then into my hair. Blech.

[MinimaMagistra]

SC: "So I lost ma money? It never minutes, I gotta say-"

My guess, potentially, is that he has had trouble before where he's attempted to put minutes on his phone and, either through a fluke or incompetence, failed.

Because, you see, it never minutes.

Also, to Cia: You suck.

[MinimaMagistra]

Lord, I forgot that this thread had multiple pages. Was an arachnaphobe most of my life (from an incident when I was very young. A black and yellow spider can stretch out to obscene porportions on a six-year-old's chest), but I've been working on it. Mostly good, now.

Uber-sadness, though, is what happened when I was circa thirteen. There had been a fairly large spider crawling along the ceiling beams in the kitchen. Mom had tried to do the cup-and-paper thing while standing on a chair, but it was too big for the cup and she fell off the chair. I was vaccuming the baseboards with the shop-vac (read: box-like with hose attachment) when I saw the spider right there. I sucked up the thing without conscious thought, but you can be DAMNED sure I was sorry to have done so when I could feel its body thunk past my hand on the hose. So... groady... I ended up taking the shop-vac outside in case it lived and crawled back out at me. Then I went and quietly freaked out for a while.

[Andara Bledin]

Here in Oz we have little black spiders, about an inch long with a cigar shaped abdomen and a white streak on their back - not huge but with a rather poisonous (seriously, it nectrotises the flesh) and painful bite.

Another freaky story - we don't have many poisonous or large spiders in Victoria, where I live. Not many large spiders in Oz, full stop. However a friend of mine was once unpacking in a new house when she saw a spider with a black shiny carapace moving very fast across the floor - she tells me its body was 2 inches square, at least. They grab a street directory, which is bigger than an A4 sheet of paper and weighs about 3 kilos (3 inches high, too) and drop it on top of the beasty. Problem solved, right?
Nooooo.
The street directory rises off the floor and starts slowly moving towards the wall.
...
..
crap.
They killed it in the end but there wasn't enough left to identify it. But there's nothing that fits that description that is native to Australia. Scary.

Toilet Dolphin! Where can I get one? That would be so cool, it would go with my orangutan hatstand.

That would likely be the funnel web spider. It's aggressive, fast, mean, has a painful bite, and it's venom is highly toxic. Also, they can grow to be over 2.5 inches (6-7cm) long.

That means that the monster your friend attacked with the directory was likely a male funnel web. Commonly considered one of the most deadly spiders in the world. Not necessarily because it's bite is bad, which it can be, but because it bites with little to no provocation and will often invade habitations, especially during the warmer summer months, which is mating season.

The brown recluse is very common in the soutcentral midwest US. Thankfully, it doesn't like a lot of fuss so generally stays away from habitations. It's not as common in the southwest, although I do have a friend who was bitten by one here in California. (he caught the spider in question, so there's no chance of misidentification) He's got a small divot that had to be taken out of calf to remove the necrotized flesh.

^-.-^

[Imogene]

You are a Pirate!

*Ron White* "Close!" */Ron*
True origins

Also:

Glad someone else thought of it too! http://www.talklikeapirate.com/

Did you know Hermione Granger, of Harry Potter, was born on Talk like a pirate day? It's canon.

[B&NGoddess]

ive been stting here reading this thread and scratching. and feeling things that arent there crawling on me. thanks alot guys.

ive always thought that potato bugs were the little armadillo lookin things that curl up into a ball when you touch em. ive heard em called pill bugs too though, so maybe im wrong. because the "potato bugs" ive seen look nothin like the "jerusalem cricket". is that thing even legal?

[Andara Bledin]

ive always thought that potato bugs were the little armadillo lookin things that curl up into a ball when you touch em. ive heard em called pill bugs too though, so maybe im wrong. because the "potato bugs" ive seen look nothin like the "jerusalem cricket". is that thing even legal?

Disturbing, isn't it?

I guess the "potato bug" thing is partially regional. I know when I did the Google image search for it, I got a lot of "pill bugs" in the results. You might also see pill bugs referred to as sow bugs, but that's not quite correct. Sow bugs are actually a form of crustacean and not an insect at all. Actually, without doing a lot more research, I'm not certain what is exactly true about pill bugs and sow bugs. Some sites have them separated one way, others have them separated the opposite way, and yet others list them as all being the same type of creature.

^-.-^

[Pagan]

However, I only apply this method because I do not own firearms and its actually very difficult to hit a spider with a claymore. Not that I haven't tried.

Have you tried a short-sword? Or perhaps a dirk? How 'bout a sgian auchlas (I don't think that's spelled right)? Or maybe you want to go bigger with a lochaber axe?

[Pagan]

ive always thought that potato bugs were the little armadillo lookin things that curl up into a ball when you touch em.

We always called those "rolly-pollys". Used to drive my mom nuts bringing gobs of them into the house!

I guess the "potato bug" thing is partially regional.

I think what you're thinking of is a Child of the Earth. Is this it? http://waynesword.palomar.edu/images/potbug4.jpg
Creepiest damned things. My supervisor when I was at VSC had just moved out here from Ohio. Her house was out in the hinterlands of Rio Rancho. She saw one of these in her house, was describing it to us, completely freaked out, and we're all about to fall over laughing at her! She'd never seen one before. Then we told her about centipedes, spiders of varying size, scorpions, etc.

I just remembered another one. I was getting one of the stock pots out of the drawer below the stove. Took the lid off, looked down, and lo-and-behold, there's a centipede! Well, got the two smaller lids out of there, took the pot over to the front door and threw said centipede out the door. Then I had to wash the pot and the lids!

Juwl, you need to go talk to the asst. mgr. where I used to work. She is a self-confessed Harry Potter geek.

[Imogene]

Juwl, you need to go talk to the asst. mgr. where I used to work. She is a self-confessed Harry Potter geek.

Tell her to check out www.tomsmithonline.com . There is a freebie song on there called... Hey, It's Can(non), which is all about Hermione. I would also suggest checking out the song, A Boy and His Frog. If you don't cry yourself silly, you either are dead, or have no soul.