A bad case of drink, youth and arachnids...
I recently had cause to recall a strange incident from my youth:
Having spent a night out on the razzle once, I trundled home, colapsed into my annoyingly creaky bed and .. well, passed out.
Some time later [not sure when] I felt something on my face. This woke me up.
I raised a shaking hand to my head in a sad attempt to wipe my face.
The resultant blow from my poorly coordinated swipe nearly burst my nose.
Anyway...
Morning. Woke up. Got out of bed [only just]. Went [staggered] into bathroom. Looked at myself in the mirror.
Spider smeared diagonally across my face.
Poor little bugger never stood a chance...
posted by Wayne Smallman at Friday, March 25, 2005
12 Comments:
At least it was quick and painless.
I tend to go through phases of being scared of spiders and then not being scared and then being scared and then not ...
Some spiders are poisionous.. you are lucky you didnt swallow any of it!
Fortunatley, we don't have any poisonous spider in Britain.
But that doesn't stop them from biting you, which has been known to lead to severe infection.
Typically involving massive swelling of the infected region, along with excessing weeping of puss from the wound tracks.
Blegh!
We're lucky in Britain having no poisonous spiders and only one poisonous snake (his name's Jeff).
Hi Ekapa, and thanks for posting!
"I don't know how you keep your cool. spiders are nasty."
I'll let you into a secret: the only reason I didn't 'react' is for the fact the poor little bastard was already dead.
We don't get any exotic spiders over here -- unless they come in with a fruit shipment -- but we do get some hefty specimens, I can tell you!
I'll tell you a little story...
One night, the house alarm went off. So dad and I bumbled downstairs in the usual bleary-eyed fashion and into the dining room.
Dad barged through the dining room door, I was just behind him. Dad was on auto-pilot, so he didn't switch either the dining room light or the adjoining kitchen light on.
He went into the pantry to turn the alarm off.
I was peering through the curtains when he emerged from the pantry, switched the light on in the kitchen and I heard him exclaim: "Look at this!"
I turned. There dad stood bent-kneed in his baggy boxer shorts pointing to the floor.
There in front of him was this huge spider .. tropical huge.
"We need something to trap it with." He remarked.
"Yeah, a chair and circus whip." I replied.
In the end, I used a small basin and some stiff card to scoop the little shit up into and then out into the yard.
We think the spider actually crawled over the alarm censor over the top of the kitchen cabinet and set the alarm off.
The body of the spider was about 3cm long and 1.5cm wide.
If I was to have held the thing in the palm of my hand [yeah, right!] it's non-too-dainty appendages would have just fit inside.
Several of these 'loft spiders' as we call them, appear in the house from time to time.
It is triumph of will that I'm able to deftly disguise my revulsion and horror when confronted by these .. things!
Not nice...
If my best friend were not so terrified of spiders, I would keep a tarantula as a pet.
There is really no compelling reason to fear them.
I'm not sure if there are any cockroaches over here.
"If my best friend were not so terrified of spiders, I would keep a tarantula as a pet.
There is really no compelling reason to fear them."
I wouldn't have a pet spider, certainly not a tarantula.
As well as biting -- which is bad enough -- they have this pretty amazing gift of flicking the spiny hairs on their back into the face of whoever it is that they feel might otherwise be pissing them off.
The outcome?
Well, once you breath cloud of hairs in, something akin to silicosis, which can be fatal.
Not nice...
Emi, why a pet spider?
If I had a tarantula, I wouldn't handle it. Most wild animals don't like humans to handle them. However, most "pet shop" tarantulas are pretty safe if you know how to handle them properly.
I used to be terrified of snakes until I housesat a house whose yard had two snakes. Each day when I watered the plants in the garden, the snakes would be there, sunning themselves. But they were shy and always slithered off when I approached. I got used to them and overcame my very intense fear in a matter of days. At the time I thought they were kingsnakes, but they might've been rattle-less rattlesnakes (not uncommon).
All animals are fascinating and far less scary if you teach yourself about them.
YECH! But at least it was one less spider for you to eat in your sleep.
Mmmmmm........protein!!!
Emi!
You've just reminded me .. man, how'd I forget?
Along with not having poisonous spiders, we don't have poisonous snakes, either.
And the snakes we do have are usually small in size and / or confined to southern climes.
Anyway, it's another story, so brew some tea and pull up a chair...
There I was, out jogging.
It's about Autumn time last year and there's a fresh nip to the air.
I've just made it through the bottom of the woods and I'm now bathed in Autumnal sunshine.
Bliss!
I take a big gulp of air and set off down the tractor track that bestrides the footpath marking the upper edge of the wheat field that's just been stripped of its harvest.
There I am, deftly tracing a path through the uneven, still damp earth and rough grass when something moves about a stride or two in front of me.
I quickly adjust my step to avoid standing on what it is that just I saw.
I only saw the thing for a split second, but that's all I needed.
"A snake?!" I exclaim .. minus the obligatory expletives.
Now stood, I quickly turn to look at the ground.
There folded in three, the snakes head slowly and casually dips into the grass verge at the foot of the hedgerow, soon to be followed by the unfurling mass of the rest of the body.
Other than in a zoo, a book or on television, I've never been that close to a snake.
I was fascinated.
Dark metallic green almost, with a darker diamond pattern running down the full length of the body from head to tail.
Easily three feet long, but hard to tell because much of the specimen was folder into itself. But the width of the body was a definite inch and a half in diameter.
The snake quickly but nonchalantly disappeared. I just raised my brow and then carried on with my jog.
Suffice to say, having got back home, scanned several books and scoured the the internet on local, indigenous fauna, as far as I'm aware, there are no snakes like it in the British Isles.
A dumped pet, maybe?
Who knows, but this thing was active during a mild English Autumn. Whether the snake would last out the winter .. who knows?
Strange...
That does sound like a dumped pet, though I don't know enough about herps to guess the species. Snakes can hibernate (and they don't need to eat often) so if it could've survived the winter. Dumbasses who dump their pets...I have WORDS for them.
Post a Comment
<< Home