Thursday, October 21, 2010

Arachnaphobia...

Lissa has a run-in with a ginormous spider.

Hilarity ensues. Go read the whole thing, but be warned - please swallow all liquids lest you spray them all over your monitor and/or keyboard. Here's a sample:
It’s eleven o’clock at night. I’m making the nightly round, checking the locks and doors, and I reach for the sawed-off broomstick that wedges the sliding patio door. As I sweep back the curtain and reach down, I notice A SPIDER THE SIZE OF A F***ING CADILLAC SITTING ON THE INSIDE OF OUR GLASS DOOR.

She provides some pictures for scale - it's a mighty small Cadillac - and weaves (ha!) an interesting yarn of doing battle with indigenous critters in her new sunny FLA home. Living up north, where it's generally too cold for critters of this type, it had to have been a shock. It also reminded me of when I was in college and working in the produce section of the local grocery store. We opened up a box of bananas and found that it had a stowaway - a black widow spider. They're surprisingly small - but the hourglass gives it away.

And there's no truth to the rumor that I developed a 4' vertical leap that day...

That is all.

11 comments:

Julie said...

lol ... well come visit here ... unless it's a red back we don't actually worry about spiders - not to mention the scorpions / snakes & variety of other critters

Mike W. said...

must've been a Caddy Catera....

Jay G said...

Or worse, a Cimarron {shudder}...

Julie, there are good reasons that Oz is located so far from MA. Critters that can kill you with a single bite/sting are one big one... :D

Newbius said...

White men CAN jump, given sufficient motivation...

Lissa said...

Oh c'mon, I thought it was gonna be a banana spider! Apparently my first sight of those buggers is gonna triple the range of my shriek.

BobG said...

Hell, you can't go anywhere around here without running into black widows; we just smash 'em and move on. I've known several people who have been bitten by them, it tends to put you under the weather.
Mostly what I see indoors is wolf spiders, and they don't hurt anything unless it has six legs.

Mike W. said...

I'm with Bob G. I leave the Wolf spiders alone. They're good, they kill vermin you wouldn't want around.

Around here we have Black Widows and big ass Brown Recluses. Those things are scary.

PISSED said...

Google.."Camel Spider"

Lissa said...

PISSED: NO. I WILL NOT. ;-)

wv: whabster. (v) To whack a spider with a Webster dictionary.

libertyman said...

Look! Spiders in Australia big enough to eat a bird!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/3353693/Giant-spider-eating-a-bird-caught-on-camera.html


Run!

Steven M. said...

The dock spiders in Maine grow HUGE. 5" or more leg tip to leg tip, black, hairy. I should know, I have a family of them. I have no idea if they are poisonous, but they are pretty fearless until you are inches away from swatting them. Add that to the fact of how fast they move, and you get pretty much discouraged from attempting to evict them. Fling them into the water? Heh, they float, and can run just as fast on the water, straight back towards the flinger.