web analytics

Help me, Edna! You’re my only hope!

I had coffee with one of my neighbors this morning. She’s an earthy farmer’s daughter type. I walk in the shop and she stares thoughtfully at my left tit for a moment and says, “you know, I think that’s the largest spider I’ve ever seen.”

I did my best shrieking Lord of the Dance impersonation. After I did, in fact, GEDDIDOFFAME! GEDDIDOFFAME! she said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t think you’d be the type…” Real disappointed-like.

Jesus. Live-and-let-live a placid kitchen spider is one thing, but how many people are cool with flipping tarantulas creeping up their chests?

Anyway, I won’t post a picture of the kind of spider I think it was. I’ve done a spider this week. Have a recent picture of Mad Jack. He’s old enough for his first shots now and he goes in for them tomorrow afternoon.

Today, he fell in the toilet and discovered water.

Comments


Comment from Bob Fossa
Time: November 6, 2013, 11:32 pm

The jokes write themselves. Farmer’s daughter, moist kitty, creeping arachnids of the close kind in some English tomb of Old King Cole…


Comment from LesterIII
Time: November 6, 2013, 11:32 pm

I have a great name for your band, Sweas:

Mad Jack and the Arachnids.

You should embrace the retro, vinyl thing going on and create some full-blown-Sweasely-awesome LP jacket art to go in it as well.


Comment from J.S.Bridges
Time: November 6, 2013, 11:54 pm

That-there stuff’s wettish, ain’t it, Jack?…wot ya gets fer sportin’ aroun’ the ol’ porcelain facility, now, innit?

Sweasey, I know (rather unfortunately) just about how you felt – once had a Close Encounter Of The Wrong (And Fright-Making) Kind with a rather-largeish wolf spider while on a camping trip. Awakened nose-to-spidey-head, so to speak – My, my, how big those beady li’l eyes do look when uprightclose like that. I think I still hold a World Record – or at least Regional/State-level – for Launch From A Zip-Closed Sleeping Bag, Horizontal-Outdoor Division…

How I managed to not a) wet the bed or b) stove in my skull on the (quite nearby, actually) trunk of the tree I was camping under, I do not know to this day.

Fun!(?)


Comment from Mrs Compton
Time: November 7, 2013, 12:15 am

I hope you aren’t one of those “if it’s yellow, let it mellow” people.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: November 7, 2013, 12:15 am

Oh, have I got a wolf spider story for you! When I was about fourteen, I was watching TV with my mother. We lived in an old farmhouse with a shiny wood floor. Into the bright patch of TV light walked a wolf spider.

My mother (who was also an arachnophobe) slammed a beer can down on it. And hundreds of tiny baby wolf spiders came boiling out from under.

Wolf spiders carry their egg sacs around on their bodies.


Comment from iamfelix
Time: November 7, 2013, 2:00 am

Thankee for no pix, story bad enough (as someone who survived a fairly hideous brown recluse encounter) . Kitteh is darling enough to make it all better. ๐Ÿ™‚


Comment from Bob Mulroy
Time: November 7, 2013, 2:02 am

“Wolf spiders carry their egg sacs around on their bodies.”

And their babies as well. I know this Zen Master who maintained that the mommy Wolf spider allowed her young to eat her at some point. I can’t find any literature to support that. I’m pretty sure they just learn to hunt by hitching a ride.

Maybe when mom dies, the young eat her? I have not found any evidence, though.


Comment from Pupster
Time: November 7, 2013, 3:16 am

You sure it wasn’t Edna hitching a tit ride?


Comment from kilroy182
Time: November 7, 2013, 4:00 am

A ‘few’ years ago, late fall, just getting cold enough for a coat. I was running late for my third shift job so I grabbed a jacket from the closet and jumped in the car. About five miles down the road I feel a feathery tickle on the top of my left hand, turned on the dome light to find the biggest wolf spider I had ever seen. I stared for a couple seconds, then performed the patented Mr Miyagi ‘paint the fence’ maneuver against the roof of the car. Sometimes people look at me weird because I always pull my coat sleeves inside out before I put them on now.


Comment from beasn
Time: November 7, 2013, 5:07 am

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axDpsLPhYSg&t=0m10s


Comment from Paula Douglas
Time: November 7, 2013, 7:01 am

“Jesus” is right. How the hell do you defend yourself against something so silent and random? Two days ago I pulled into the garage and went back to the liftgate to unload the car and saw the biggest, blackest, hairiest spider I’ve ever seen in real life, outside those plate-sized tarantulas in zoos. Thank the sweet lord it was already dead: curled up on its back. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it: was it in the house at one point? Did it eat all my geckos? It was big enough. I’d rather have scorpions around than spiders. What do they need all those nasty legs for, anyway? And how many eyes are enough? I say two. Anything else is unnatural and alien.

Thank you for posting a picture of Captain Jack, instead. The little cutie. The breeder of my most recent Oriental purchase sent me a picture of my kitten’s brother, sopping wet in a towel. He had been helping the breeder brush her teeth, backed up, and fell in the toilet.


Comment from Tom
Time: November 7, 2013, 11:23 am

I have to second Paula’s comment on the unnatural, and frankly unneeded, excess of legs and eyes on arachnids. Redistribute I say! Give those extra legs to snakes and those surplus eyes to whatever doesn’t have any. Blind Mole rats maybe?

And as for beasn’s link: BURN IT WITH FIRE!!!

Although you might want to be careful about how you do that


Comment from Deborah
Time: November 7, 2013, 2:03 pm

I killed a large hairy spider in my bathroom with a can of Redken hair spray, which had a red top on a black can. I thought it was Raid. I remember thinking, “Wow! They’ve really improved the smell of this stuff.” I say the hair spray killed the spider; I really don’t know. But the “extra hold” stopped his forward mobility instantly, and I plucked him off the wall with large tweezers and flushed him away. Since then I’ve used Aqua Net, VO5, and Paul Mitchell as bug hold. It works great ๐Ÿ™‚

@Kilroy182: roger that.


Comment from steve
Time: November 7, 2013, 3:22 pm

Today, he fell in the toilet and discovered water.

Baptism of……

Well, baptism, anyway.


Comment from steve
Time: November 7, 2013, 3:29 pm

BTW….We got a new kitten a bit over a year ago and it fell to me to take her to the mobile cat neutering service, the day they were parked nearby (really….we have that up here in our neck of the woods)

That cat knew that it was me that inflicted that particular near doom experience upon her (from snatching her and stuffing her into the cat carrier, to the undignified hand-off at the “snip-mobile”, to the return trip, home)

That cat hated on me for nearly two months….I had no idea those critters could hold a grudge that long.

My wife, who foisted that duty off onto me, was still revered as the ever so sweet and generous food lady.


Comment from Wolfus Aurelius
Time: November 7, 2013, 3:41 pm

I dunno, my cats never seem to hold a grudge about having their batteries disconnected. I took Wolf, the current black incumbent, in when he was about 1.5 years old, and he came back none the worse for wear, no less energetic, and no less quietly affectionate to me.

As for spiders on you, I got a horror story that’s worth two of that. One night I drifted up out of sleep in my queen-sized bed, feeling what seemed to be cat whiskers tickling my ear. I reached out with a smile to pet the current lady cat. Nothing.

I bolted out of bed and flicked on the light. Sure enough, a large dark cockroach was just scuttling away from my pillow. Gah.

Savagely I killed it, like James Bond smashing the poisonous centipede that’s been crawling on him in Doctor No, ran for the loo, and washed my ear out very thoroughly.

As the comedian said, I’ve had roaches in bed with me before. But when they cuddle up and throw one leg over you . . .


Comment from MikeW
Time: November 7, 2013, 7:57 pm

Well Swease, if your neighbor HAD thought you ‘were the type’ would she have calmly walked over to you and slapped that sucka off your, um, bosom? I can’t imagine her swing would have been accurate enough to avoid, uh, reverberations. Would you have decked her before you found out why she did it? Then again, should she have just watched as it climbed until it reached your neck?
Hmm, bad as it was, I think you got off easy. ๐Ÿ™‚

BTW, Paula Douglas, have you ever been able to find what’s hiding in your garage and killed the giant spider?


Comment from Subotai Bahadur
Time: November 7, 2013, 8:00 pm

OK, spider story that may or may not “squeam” people.

In my part of Colorado we have tarantula migrating season. They will travel cross country, from point A to point B for whatever reason drives them.

Back before I retired, I encountered a specimen of Felonius Erraticus Erectus on the sidewalk; well out of his usual urban habitat. He was acting …. hinky. So I stopped to talk to him. The approach was friendly and civil. I learned a long, long time ago that it is always much easier to start off nice and become hostile if it is indicated than the other way around.

What I got was a response indicating acute, chronic RCI syndrome. I saw motion on the ground nearby, glanced down, and saw Br’er Tarantula walking across the sidewalk.

Tarantulas actually are gentle critters, rarely bite and have to be really provoked to do so. Br’er was about 5″ across the legs. I bent down, gently urged him onto the palm of my hand, and stood up facing said specimen.

I continued questioning him, letting the tarantula walk from one hand to another back and forth. It is amazing that the RCI syndrome went into immediate remission. Granting that his eyes got real big, and he was focused on the tarantula; but suddenly it became, “yes sir, no sir, three bags full sir”.

We sorted out that his presence was legal, and in fact he went on his way, parting on civil terms. I put Br’er Tarantula down on a nearby lawn, and he also went on his way. While I do not speak arachnid, I’m pretty sure we parted on good terms.

Subotai Bahadur


Comment from Argentium G. Tiger
Time: November 7, 2013, 8:57 pm

Wolfus Aurelius:

Based on your story, if you haven’t seen this clip from Babylon 5, allow me to share:

Londo Mollari vs. The Bug


Comment from Scubafreak
Time: November 7, 2013, 10:36 pm

Cool. When are you going to start teaching mad Jack the ballad of Barnacle Bill?


Comment from Paula Douglas
Time: November 7, 2013, 10:43 pm

No, Mike, I have not. But as long as it’s not a bigger spider–that’s what you were trying to creep me out with, right?–it’s welcome to stay. There are a couple of 5″ house geckos living in there. They eat a lot of bugs, but if they’d killed the spider they’d have eaten it, too, I suppose. There was enough vile arachnid flesh there to keep a couple of geckos fed for a week. Maybe the spider died of fright at whatever’s lurking in the garage.


Comment from Uncle Badger
Time: November 8, 2013, 12:52 am

Subotai Bahadur – Now that’s what I call policing!


Comment from SCOTTtheBADGER
Time: November 8, 2013, 11:04 am

Subotai, I did not know that there was more than one Piggy-Wig here!


Comment from David Gillies
Time: November 8, 2013, 6:48 pm

I don’t mind spiders, even the bird-eating Theraphosa blondi monsters that live in the woods in these parts. But cockroaches are foul and evil and on the rare occasions I get one it dies very very soon after. I don’t see them much indoors (the secret is militant cleanliness in food preparation areas and keeping lids on bins) but one will get in from outside occasionally. A few nights back I got up to get a drink from the fridge and saw something gleaming on the floor. I grabbed the can of insecticide and gave it a blast. It scuttled off and then did the breakdance-of-central-nervous-system-death. This thing was, no shit (I measured it, cringing) 10cm long and 6cm wide – that’s bigger than a mouse. It was like a regular cockroach with a dome-shaped shield over it. It took a good two minutes to stop scrabbling about and it was still twitching when I put it in the bin. Vile, vile thing.


Comment from JuliaM
Time: November 9, 2013, 6:52 pm

I hope you haven’t ordered a BMX for Christmas?

http://metro.co.uk/2013/11/07/an-arachnophobes-worst-nightmare-extremely-fast-spider-with-nasty-bite-arrives-in-uk-4178246/

๐Ÿ™‚


Comment from imbuygold
Time: January 22, 2014, 3:46 am

Can you tell us more about this? I’d want to find out more
details.

Write a comment

(as if I cared)

(yeah. I'm going to write)

(oooo! you have a website?)


Beware: more than one link in a comment is apt to earn you a trip to the spam filter, where you will remain -- cold, frightened and alone -- until I remember to clean the trap. But, hey, without Akismet, we'd be up to our asses in...well, ass porn, mostly.


<< carry me back to ol' virginny