Spiders?
 

Yesterday's IOTD brought out the spider-stomper in jinx, spudcon and the arachnid-adorer in zen and pie. Cloud, Shawnee and slothboy also seemed less than keen on our eight-legged friends -how do all y'all feel about them? imagine there was one weaving a web on your monitor right now...... :lol:

:eyeball::eyeball::eyeball::eyeball::eyeball::eyeball::eyeball::eyeball:

:eek:

:footpyth:

Perfectly okay in their own right, perform many useful functions, I squish them unless they are outside.

My cat eats them. Keryx says YUK!!!

I like them. I am forced to squish them when my step daughter hears about one being withing 50 yards of her. She screams and hollers and acts like she is possessed. I feel bad for the spider, though. He wasn't doing anything wrong!

Hate them! Especially now that it is colder, they are trying to take over my house. I will kill them on sight!

My main complaint is that they make the women in my house lose their shit.

If they're in a room's corner somwhere, I leave them to do their job. When they sit in some other place I need to access, I'll take them outside. Useful little buggers and many of them beautiful to look at.

I have an irrational fear of them. I think I know why...but it doesn't change it.

To kill them, I rarely can get near enough. I've thrown shoes from afar, usually missing. I really don't like to kill them, I feel badly for them, but how the heck am I going to escort them outside when I can't get near them?

If you think they're minding their own spider business when they are across the room in their happy little corner, you're dead wrong. They're plotting their course of action for later, when you're asleep, when they will crawl all over your face. :p

My cat also enjoys the occasional spider snack. The ones she misses, I place out-of-doors. I prefer 8 legs to 6 such as are found in ants, cockroaches, etc. The 8 legged crowd keeps the 6 legged one in control.

My only exception is the black widow, and I kill them without a second thought should I encounter one.

Oh, BTW, its time for the great tarantula migration here in the Southwest. You can see many of them marching across highways and scuttling over the landscape in general. Its high season now, so ya'll come.

I agree with someone who once told me that spiders are a sign of femininity.

I like 'em, and will take them outside for their own protection (we have predatory cats).
I'll kill mosquitoes, ants, flies, silverfish, earwigs etc. without a second thought.

Oh gawd I hate earwigs. Nasty little effers.

Any bug in my house will bother me, but I don't freak like I do with spiders.

I have a new black kitty cat and I named her SpiderMan. Is that relevant?

From little on up, I was terrified of them. I used to have my brother kill it when I found one. Now that I'm married, I'm often called upon by my wife to save her. So, I have learned to not be so irrational about not liking them. Having said that, if one catches me by surprise, I still react of out fear.

Funny story. My Mom and dad have a shed out back of their house. They had a ground hog underneath it digging holes causing the shed to sink a bit. So, we were using a piece of chain to level out the ground underneath it. We got the chain through from one side to the other and used a sawing motion to even out the dirt. Well, when we got to the end, I was on my stomach using my arm to scoop out the excess dirt. One of the armfuls of dirt pulled out a spider as big around as a can of vegetables. I about shit myself. You've never seen someone go from horizontal to vertical in such a short time. LOL! :eek:

Spiders and I have a deal. They aren't paying rent, so they are taking the risk on themselves. I'm a squisher and flusher, in case I didn't squish them well enough.

We get a lot of the teeny tiny itty bitty ones around here, and I'm usually too lazy to bother chasing after those. They sit in the corner by the front door and don't bother anyone.

But anything larger than two millimeters gets squished. Anything larger than a dime (including leg span) triggers at least a momentary fear reaction. I've never encountered one that made me completely lose my shit, except for the time I bravely swatted one about the size of a quarter... and a cloud of about a hundred baby spiders poofed out of the dead mommy. That one made me scream.

Ditto this. I usually just pretend I don't see 'em.

Same with the centipedes. We get bunches of those little creepy leggy critters. I looked 'em up (never saw them before living in this particular house), found out they're pretty harmless, eat other bugs like spiders. So I leave 'em be.

I think I've talked about spiders before. They're all over the place here. We get ones inside all the time. Unless they're venomous like redbacks or something, they're free to do their thing. Along with spiders, we have a multitude of strange creepy crawlies, and the spiders keep them under control somewhat, especially the cockroaches. Between the cats and the spiders, we don't seem to have any, so that's good considering the amount of food crumbs the kids spill all over the place.

The ones I find the most fascinating (and which are responsible for catching cockies) are huntsmen spiders. They can grow quite large, but they're pretty harmless. They can bite, but I've never known one to. They'd make good pets as they're pretty docile.

As already noted, I am fairly fond of spiders, but I do keep some control over admission to my house. Polite small spiders that spin webs in quiet corners can stay, as can small Roving Wolf spiders which patrol the flyscreens on my windows.
However, Redbacks (a variety of black widow, and potentially lethal) and White-tails (implicated in arachnoid necrosis) are escorted outside and dumped in the garden.
I keep a piece of plastic off some packaging, and a flat sheet of carboard, to use to remove unwanted creepy crawlies in general.

Now, mosquitos ... hate the little suckers. Whining, blood-sucking, disease-spreading, itch-causing little buggers. You die squish now!

ETA: This might be different if I lived in Sydney, home territory of the Sydney Funnel-Web Spider. Those things are aggressive and deadly; before the development of the antivenom, a bite from one could kill an adult in a few hours....

I don't think I've ever killed a spider...the last time I saw any, there were hundreds of tiny ones in a gigantic, practically invisible web within inches of my elbow. I, um, moved away a little--just to give them their space, you know.

I watched my mother kill a black widow once, and even though I knew they were very poisonous, there was still something kind of tragic about it. I'd gladly squish a centipede or a cockroach, but a spider...a non-poisonous one, definitely not. A poisonous one, I can see myself hesitating, but I guess it would be better to deal with it.

I let 'em be, unless they infringe on my personal space, in which case, it's every living thing for itself.

I waterboard 'em, to find out where the rest are, then call for an air strike.

:lol: yeah and how many civillian aphids and ladybugs die in your airstrike you military-industrial genocidal maniac???? :lol2:

Fuck 'em, they're all bugs, guilty by association.:footpyth:

I am fine with them anywhere in my house except my bedroom. If I find them in my bedroom I escort them outside: they have a tendency to end up on the ceiling and I am freaked out by the idea of one falling on me in my sleep.

If I find them anywhere else in the house, I leave them be. I used to escort the bedroom spiders to somewhere else in the house, but then I realised the buggers were just making their way back quick sharp. The ones who've made their home elsewhere in my house are unlikely to spend so much time in my bedroom.

I don't like touching them so when I escort them I use a glass and a piece of card, or just scoop 'em up with a broom (gently) and deposit them outside.

::rocking my chair while picking at the crocheted blanket on my lap::
I remember my rash and ignorant younger days when I'd escort them outdoors or leave them be if they were only occupying corners I was not using. Then we moved here 2 yrs ago and I realized they were trying, by importing vast numbers of their kind into my house, to catch me in their zillions of webs and if I didn't take action soon it would be too late. It almost is. A nice big fat one dangled in front of the frige door today, and had a half dozen friends above it waiting to assist it in murdering me. It is squished and the rest outdoors now. The war will start again tomorrow morning.

In the US, there are poisonous spiders in all the lower 48 states. The black widow and yellow sack spider are throughout the US. The brown recluse and hobo spiders also have a wide range. All will mess you up if they bite you.

Link to a map of poisonous spider distribution in the US.

Sure, most spiders are safe, but can you identify a yellow sack spider? Squish them just in case.

That map is wrong. I personally know one person, in the Philly area, that was bitten by a recluse, read about another one in the paper, and heard about a third.

It's BrianR's fault, trucking the damn things all over the place. :haha:

Let 'em bite. I'm not that attached to my life.:D

But Pie, you might get reincarnated as a fly, and get eaten again.

I can add two known brown recluse bites (that necrotized in an ugly manner) in the Philadelphia area, and raise you having seen one of the bastards on my new agey friend's porch, which is the reason that it lived past my seeing it. She had a freak-out when I suggested it just needed killin'.

My mom was bitten by one in Chester County, at least that was the diagnosis. I was surprised by the map too.

Is she a racist? Or was she concerned that the widow might come husband shopping around your way?


:p

I'm beginning to think it will take another lifetime before I'm eaten again...

That's a point: there isn't much danger of a deadly spidey bite over here...

Oh yeah, and that.

Most of my yucky spider stories come from my overseas adventures in my younger days. I just swatted one on my wall.

Plenty of spiders here in the American south. I was bitten on the hand by a brown recluse - made my hand look like a foot for a week and I lost a dime-sized bit of necrotic tissue. I like spiders, all critters really, but especially like our wolf spiders here. They grow quite large and will 'challenge' you - turn on you, rise up, and appear to say, "c'mon, bring it on!"

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.

In his house at R'lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming

..of being eaten...

Here is a Sydney Funnel-web in "bring it on, bitch!" posture. Remember, this thing is about 4 or 5 cm across, those fangs are 6 or 7 mm long, can penetrate fingernails or soft clothing, and are dripping with venom that will kill you in a few hours if you don't get to hospital damn fast.

Attachment 25106

But it's probably trying to defend it's babies... won't someone please think of the children? :p