YIKES!!!

bapu

yes, whimpy.
LOL


still......

http://www.snopes.com/photos/bugs/camelspider.asp    real picture..... description not exactly accurate.... still some pretty big bugs.

nice pic there Bat.... she looks healthy for sure. 

On the discovery channel they have a show called Infestations.... or something like it.... they describe folks who have run into infestations of all kinds of critters...... bats, snakes, spiders, ants, scorpions, etc.... they did one on Black Widows in Arizona.... the house was full of them.  The folks were finding them in the beds at nights and were getting bit.  Scary stuff. 

A spider story: 

So about 30 years ago..... I was playing in a band and the band broke up. So I decided to do a solo guitarist gig for a time. I would go out to clubs and play acoustic guitar and sing.  

I played a number of the military clubs since they could keep me working during the week. I ended up at the Courthouse Bay enlisted club.  A few Marines walked in with a shoe box and set it on the table while drinking their beer.  Every now and then they would peek in the box and then replace the lid. 

Eventually they opened the box and one Marine reaches in and removes a pet Tarantula. He let it crawl around. Soon however, the spider stopped moving... it just sat there on the table. 

One of the Marines brings it up to the stage while I was on break and set the freaking thing ON MY MIC!  
I returned to the stage and saw this huge honking spider on my Mic. I was about to hit it when the Marine says.... Hey don't hit it... it's already dead. 

Seems they had decided to get the spider high with them. They were smoking some pot before they came into the club. They had shotgunned the spider by blowing smoke directly into the shoe box. Apparently the spider OD'd on the smoke and expired inside the club. 

They thought it would be great fun to put it on my mic.  Yeah right......  wrong!

They recovered the spider's carcass from the mic.... I refused to touch it dead or not..... and placed it back in the shoe box and replaced the lid. They took it with them a few minutes later when they left the club... probably to go smoke another doob.

those wacky marines...

Having been a Marine in the past at the age of 19 and away from home for the first time.... I can relate to a degree. 

I've seen them eat beer cans and glass. Just bit off a chunk.... chew it and swallow.... I can't imagine what the next morning's hangover would be like...or that bathroom visit..... 

Oh My!

I won't mention where I work, but we have them all over the place. Black widows, not Marines. Or tarantulas.
I've complained numerous times but they're still there.
Last week, a baby opossum got in and made a bed for itself among the patio furniture cushions. They closed that area of the store all day and called animal control to trap it. Management was afraid of the possibility of a customer getting bitten by the 'possum and getting rabies, but they don't seem to worry about customers (or me) possibly getting bitten by a venomous spider and dying...
I always wear gloves.

Herb, we call those Garden Spiders with the awesome webs Orb Weavers or August Spiders ('cause that's when you mostly see them).  I have a friend who refuses to walk out onto his patio without first grabbing his "spider stick" a waving it around in the air ahead of him. Makes for some funny pantomime.  But, a good idea, even if hilarious to watch.

orb weavers are cool.


they like to shake their webs when they think they've gotten something in there, to help snare it...


you can just wiggle the web a bit, and they'll start shaking it like mad!

cracks me up...

OTOH, had a grandmother that lived in Africa for a couple years...

She saw the spider and its web in the house, went to make sure its remaining life was short...

And was told not to touch it... spiders were the good guys as they ate malaria carrying mosquitos.