Creepy Crawlies
I sat in bed last night at 8:00, doing my line-edits for my Feb 09 release, Able-Bodied, with a cup of tea and a stash of chocolate on my nightstand. There was a cool breeze coming through the windows, and I was really enjoying the peace and quiet. Within fifteen minutes, however, both my girls were sprawled on the bed beside me, and they were being so sweet that I didn't object when they wanted to turn on the television (little did I know they just wanted my chocolate, LOL!).
For the next hour we sat, enthralled, watching a Discovery channel show about deadly little critters and what happens when they bite you. I'm talking stiletto snakes, rattlesnakes, and brown recluse spiders, to name a few. I thought briefly about posting a picture of a bite, but they're so gorey I decided against it.
So after watching this horrifying show, and being eternally grateful that I don't live an area where these little beasties also reside, I sent the kids to bed. About two minutes later, I heard a blood-curdling scream that had both my husband and I tripping over each other to get into my younger daughter's bedroom. There, on the doorframe over her closet, was a spider. A teensy, tiny little spider that my husband scooped up with his hand and put outside.
I'm not typically squeamish, but admit to having a fear of spiders and snakes, unless they look like this:
or this:
Our overzealous reaction to garden snakes and daddy long-legs drives my husband nuts, and he just can't understand what all the fuss is about. What about you? Can you handle a snake or scoop up a spider without any trouble? Or, like me and my daughters, does the sight of a creepy-crawlie send you, screaming, for the nearest chair or table?
I don't mind snakes, unless
I don't mind snakes, unless they're poisonous, but spiders wig me right the heck out! BLARRRRG!!!! I blame it on my years working at Cedar Point Amusement Park -- they had these big, hairy spiders that lived all over the dorms, and they were just everywhere. And I found them, or parts of them, IN MY BED!!!!!!!!
And I got bitten by one!!!!!
*rocks and weeps in corner at the horror*
M
Eeeeeek!!!!!!!!!!!
OMG, Megan!! That would put me right over the edge, too (shudders). Yes, spiders are the biggie for me. At this time of year, they start nesting under the cedar shingles on the house and come out in droves at night. We have to be careful letting the dog out because they spin these crazy-huge webs across the door and then sit there and WAIT (for me, I'm sure!). Sometimes, they drop down on unsuspecting passersby, like little SWAT-spiders descending on ropes...ugh!
Hugs on the bite! Please tell me it wasn't a poisonous spider whose bite turns your flesh into Jello.
That's the ones in Ohio did.
That's the ones in Ohio did. You'd be walking down the hall and BAM, right in front of you. *shudder*
No, it hurt and throbbed but didn't rot my flesh, thank goodness. We get big hairy wolf spiders 'round these parts, and those things are just...BLARRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!
!!!
!!
!
:)
M
Yes
I'm arachnophobic to the extent that I want you to take the picture of the spider off of your blog -- I can't even stand pictures of them. ;)
I have gotten better. Years ago, I wouldn't even kill them, I would run, ask someone else to kill it, etc. Then one day I was sitting making dinner at my kitchen table, and heard this clink against the glass cake dish that set there, and it was one of those fat, jumping spiders -- the black ones? I freaked and called everyone I knew to come kill it, and no one could, and by that time, it had disappeared. I lived with paranoia for weeks, maybe months. I wouldn't sit at the table without checking everything out. So I learned the hard way see it, kill it.
Now, years later, I have mellowed slightly. If I see spiders outside, in the garden, etc I let them go their own way, since that's their turf. Inside, I will walk by a daddy long legs in an innocuous location (meaning, it won't get on me) or sometimes I just brush them somewhere else with the broom. But I'll kill ones that creep me out, are too large, or in inconvenient places. Or I call Mike to do it if it's really freaky - one night last year this huge thing went running across the bathroom sink and I freaked, and he had to practically dismantle the vanity to find it because I wouldn't step foot in there until he did. I turn the pillows every night, because once I found a spider under our pillow, and now I check all the time.
I just can't stand them. Snakes don't bother me, and neither do bees or that kind of thing. Mostly spiders and things like them...
Sam
Sam!!
You poor thing!! I totally sympathize with the bathroom thing--I can't tell you how many times I've gone into the bathroom in the morning and have found a spider waiting for me in the shower! If it's a little guy, or a skinny guy, I can usually bring myself to wad up lots and lots of toilet paper and grab it, and then fling it into the potty and try and flush it down while standing at least 3 feet back! But there have been many mornings where I've dragged DH out of bed and made him do the dirty work.
I hate killing spiders, too, but only because of the yucky noise and feel of them (okay, I'm totally grossing myself out). Sometimes I'll drop a heavy book on them, then make DH remove it when he gets home.
But a spider that makes an audible "clink" when it drops onto something??? Aaaaackkkk!!! I'd call in the heavy artillery -- spider exterminators!
BLLLLLAAAAAAAARRRRRGGGGGG!!!!
BLLLLLAAAAAAAARRRRRGGGGGG!!!!
Having said that (several times) -- I don't kill them. I can remove them if need be. Spiders gross me out but they don't scare me. Snakes only scare me if they're poisonous or if I think they might bite me.
Sharks? Scare the behoosus out of me.
Even on land.
M
Just for you...
Sam, I changed the picture of the spider...that brown recluse was pretty creepy!
ah, thank you
I like the new one. I might let him live. ;)
Sam
I'm the spider-killer/mover
I'm the spider-killer/mover in our house. They don't bother me at all (unless they're really huge and then I only get mildly creeped out). But snakes on the other hand... *shudder* I'm like Sam in that I can't even look at pictures without going into full-body, freaked out convulsions. :( My son found a grass snake last weekend and because he's too young to understand my phobia (he thinks it's funny yet), he tried to come after me with it. :( Not cool. I don't think I've moved that fast before.
Oh, man!
Sassa, you are my hero on the War Against Spiders! I can barely even look at them. When I was a little girl, my dad was the resident bug-killer, but then he got a huge hoot out of chasing me and my sisters around the house with them, threatening to--I don't know--throw them at us? Touch us with them? Mind you, he was a very young dad and thought this was very funny. My sisters and I are grateful we had no brothers, as he probably would have been much like our dad and our lives would have been sheer hell.
Jeannie
And lest I forget, Jeannie is my hero on the War Against Snakes!! How could we forget that photo of her with the rattler??
Ewww...
I prefer to avoid both spiders and snakes, but can deal with dispatching normal (read, "small") varieties of each if absolutely necessary. (I've found the vacuum cleaner to be a valuable tool in dealing with bugs of all sizes, but the spiders we encounter here are usually small enough to fit in nozzle... I imagine I'd pass out if confronted with larger ones!) And thankfully snakes are uncommon in our neighborhood! We had a tiny one in the garage once, but again, a bigger would would send me running for help! (I'd likely be torn--stay and keep and eye on it, or get help to get rid of it... Aaaaack!!!)
Ewwww! is right!
Fedora, when my husband and I lived in Germany, they had these enormous, hairy wolf-spiders that looked like they came straight out of a horror movie. One night I was sitting on the living room floor, legs out in front of me, sorting through some craft stuff when I caught sight of something skittering across the room. It was one of those huge, nasty spiders and it was racing across the rug, straight toward my crotch! I am not kidding...I've never moved so fast in my life. My husband had to use a crowbar to pry me off the ceiling, LOL. He still jokes about it.
I just want to clarify that
I just want to clarify that I DID have clothes on, LOL!
LOL!
Thanks, Karen! Don't want to be putting any unnecessary images in my head ;)
I don't mind either
I guess maybe it's because in Calgary Alberta we don't have big spiders or poisonous snakes. I am the person everyone calls to remove their unwanted garter snakes. But I am terrified of wasps. I swell up if bitten so those little yellow jackets send me running.
Stingers
Kaelee, thankfully none of us are allergic to wasps or yellow-jackets, but I avoid them, too. We had an infestation of bees (the little, yellow honey-bees) in the exterior wall of our bathroom this past summer. They were coming out of the electrical sockets into the bathroom and into my older daughter's bedroom. Hundreds and hundreds of them. Then they'd immediately congregate on the windows. My husband is so brave! He put on gloves, blocked up the hole on the outside of the house so they couldn't continue coming in, then opened the windows and herded most of them out. We did have to kill a few, but thankfully most of them flew out on their own. I hate to kill bees, and didn't want to spray a pesticide indoors.
Room on that bed (and is there any chocolate left)?
I say I don't mind spiders. And, for the most part, I don't. Unless they're in my house. I live in the country off a gravel road so we have lots of spiders. In the house. Hmmm.
We get little hairy ones that can scamper about a million miles an hour. There I'll be, late at night, the house quiet except for the TV. I'm reading and my husband is watching. Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I see something skitter across the floor. I'm instantly on alert! Look! Look!! My feet are now off the floor and on the chair cushion. The blanket covering my legs is being flapped madly in case a spider got on it (they run in herds, don't they?).
Husband glances away from screen. "It's just a little spider," he says and starts to go back to his programme.
I'm shrinking further into the chair cushions. "Put it out. Put it OUT!"
He gives me The Look but, obediently, wanders into the kitchen to find a cup. I, meanwhile, have it in my beady-eyed gaze. "There, there!" I point out.
Husband looks everywhere EXCEPT at the spider. "I don't see it."
"It's almost by your foot!"
He glances down, scoops it into a cup and deposits it on the back deck. He comes back inside, gives me The Look again and settles back to watch the rest of his show.
I, however, have lost my place in my book and, honestly, who can blame me. I decide to retire to bed instead.
We used to have a cat that would eat spiders. The Zen part of me said it was a bad thing but, secretly, I was cheering her on. "Go Zoe, go!"
And I won't even tell you about my reaction to snakes!
ani
Oh, Ani, this is a great
Oh, Ani, this is a great story! Our dog eats spiders! It's disgusting to watch, really, and totally gives me the heebie-jeebies, but I do watch. Just to make sure it doesn't crawl out of his mouth, LOL!
I'd do the same thing
I'd see the spider. I would grab Zoe, plunk her down a respectable distance from the spider and then cover my eyes. Between my fingers, I'd
1) make sure she found the spider
2) watch to make sure she ate it and didn't spit it back up
3) check the area later to make sure she got all of it (don't want parts left. euwww)
4) Lysol the area (just in case)
Not Just Spiders!
Oh, yes! I'm familiar with all of it...if we (the girls) see a spider, we all call the dog to come over and "Get it!" and he's always happy to oblige. He'll eat flies, too. We should have named him Pumba or Timone!
I have always lived in the
I have always lived in the country until a year ago. I have no fear of creepy crawlies.
Really? Truly? I'm very
Really? Truly? I'm very impressed, Estella!
Come on Down...
Australia has some of the most deadly snakes in the world - there's no "hey, mum, look at this cute grass snake I caught in the garden" kind of action down here. It's all about being still, backing away, then running for your life. Having said that, when I was a kid I had a friend who's father owned a Reptile and Aquatic Centre at a popular beachside holiday spot. He used to try to break world records for stuff - like living with sharks (he had a big fish tank and he hung out all day on a lilo) or living with snakes (he emptied the fish tank and put sand in the bottom and hung out with snakes). So, I got to touch a few snakes way back then, and I don't find them as creep as an adult as I do spiders. How I hate them! In Australia, we have a harmless but large spider called a Huntsman. Long skinny legs, flat, wide body. Sometimes they can get as big as the palm of your hand. They aren't poisonous, but I HATE them. One ran up my leg when I was a kid and I just stood there, paralysed with fear, while my older sister walked up and casually flicked it off my leg. They're pretty common. Then there are Red-Backs and FunnelWebs - both deadly. I live in fear of finding one of them. The great thing about being here in NZ is that they have no snakes and no poisonous spiders. It's pure BLISS!!!!
My Worst Nightmare!
A spider as big as your hand??? Okay, I am totally creeped out. I have pictures from some of our guys in Afghanistan and Iraq of these huge spiders that live over there. And in the Lord of the Rings, I really hated that scene with the giant spider...they didn't leave that thing in New Zealand after filming did they, LOL? I saw an article in the local paper today of a guy practically kissing a pet snake...a day after he was released from the hospital after being bitten by another of his little darlings. But he said it was the kind of snake that temporarily paralyzes you (as opposed to liquefying you), which he described as "pretty cool." Obviously the venom destroyed some of his brain cells!
A spider as big as your hand-non-poisonous
I would love to see one of those.
We don't have cockroaches here usually but one year I opened a box of Chinese madarin oranges and this thing crawled out. I caught it and took it to customs at the Calgary airport.(on instructions) Agriculture Canada reported back to me that it was a cockroach and that it wouldn't survive the winter here but to burn all the packaging from the oranges.This was three weeks later so good thing it wasn't serious. Needless to say all my family now check their oranges.
Ugh!!
That's just gross. I'm not afraid of spiders, but I would flip (and probably never eat oranges again) if I found something like that. A couple of years back, a local guy found a Black Widow in his bag of grapes and that's definitely not something I'd want to reach in and touch. Eew. Just...eeew.
Sassa
I have been able to buy a box of oranges again but for a while I was buying bulk ones even though they were more expensive.
Discovery Channel
We were watching something last night (Before Dinosaurs??? I think that was the title) and it was discussing dragonflies as big as eagles and spiders as big as your head!
Ugh.
Ugh, I really should not
Ugh, I really should not have looked up that visual...
I can't even say how much I don't like spiders. Snakes I can handle, used to chase them through the grass when I was little and bring them home to mom just to watch her scream :)
J.K. Coi
Immortals To Die For
www.jkcoi.com
OMG
You just reminded me of a time I did the same. I rescued a couple snakes from the boys up the street who were "playing" with them (and we all know what small boys can do with animals and bugs) and so I got them and they wrapped around my arms. I wore them into the house, and it took a few minutes for my mother to notice, but I think I flew out the back door, LOL.
I actually like snakes, though certainly wouldn't want to confront a poisonous one. My dogs love to find the ones on our walking path. They can get pretty big, but weirdly, the dogs don't seem to be able to scent them -- they find them, and will get right up there with their nose, and then the snake moves so fast that the dogs will jump and it's just hysterical.
Anyway... spiders and snakes... Karen, I don't know about you... *G*
Sam