Boris...

Boris the spider
Boris the spider
Creepy, crawly
Creepy, crawly
Creepy, creepy, crawly, crawly
Creepy, creepy, crawly, crawly
Creepy, creepy, crawly, crawly
Creepy, creepy, crawly, crawly

Little Miss Muffet sat on a tuffet...

Gee, can anyone think of just what the subject of this post might be?

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

Yes, I liked that movie. Can you tell?

So, little creepy things. You've all heard that Australia has some really mean, nasty, venomous, vile, disgusting spiders? Heck, and Sarah Palin hasn't even visited yet! It'll get even worse if she does!

Don't worry, there'll be birdy pics today. Well, at least a pic of a spider eating a bird...

One thing you may not know is that the common Aussie "Daddy-Long-Legs" is one of the most poisonous critters around. However, their fangs are so small and so soft that they can't break human skin.

And that's a good thing since they are more poisonous than a funnel web spider which WILL kill you if it bites you.

At our old place, we had a lot of daddy-long-legs in the corners. No worries, they kept the mossie population down. I saw a garden spider in the laundry room one time. A daddy-long-legs approached it, reached out with one leg, and touched it. The garden spider INSTANTLY fell to the ground (actually, the cat's litter box) and curled up dead. Ummmmmm, I was impressed...

Golden Orb spiders are cool. They spin fantastic webs each night and take them in each morning. They can also get fairly, ah, um, er, sizable. The following pics were taken up in the far north tropics. No, the bird didn't suffer. The golden orb venom works pretty darned fast. These are not my pics, they were taken by a spider curator type bloke.

I imagine this spider didn't have to eat for a month after this...






We have a little spider that lives under the lampshade in the back hallway. There's the tiniest fluoro bulb in there that pretty much has to stay on cus mum-in-law uses that hallway to get from her wing on out to the rest of the house. I don't think the spider has ever seen darkness!

Anyways, it's right next to a screen door that mossies and other bugs like to fly through. Needless to say, he's well fed. And here he is:


He's about half the size of my pinky fingernail, and keeps the bugs out. He's cool.

There are, however, some spiders that aren't so cool to have in the house. They would be huntsman spiders. At our old place a huntsman got in to the house and 3 days later we had no daddy-long-legs. Hmmmmm, nasty blokes.

They can get fairly sizable, here's proof:






When Wifey-Poo was a wee little tyke, her and her brother used to splat the huntsman spiders off the wall with a basketball. Later on they progressed to shooting them with a BB gun.

Yeah, they can get big.

They aren't poisonous.

They aren't aggressive (unless it's a sheila with an egg sac).

But their bites can turn septic very easily (bacteria on the fangs).

If they come into our house, they die.

Spider killing spray.

It works.

Most of the time...

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Oh, about a year ago I had an interesting run-in with one of the buggers. I was in the car, driving on a 3 lane highway. A huntsman crawls out from above the visor and walks across the roof. 2 inches above my head.

Yeah, that was fun. I'm very glad I'm a good driver.

The spider died.

I didn't create a road accident.

But I'm glad I always keep a spare pair of underwear in the glovebox.
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Getting back to the spider that didn't die...

I was getting dressed to go to my chiro appointment. I was in the bedroom. I noticed this in the curtain:


And it quickly became this:


After it got a massive blast of spider killer, it then looked like this:

Oh, why look. There's her egg sac...

Ok, off to the chiro.

Upon my return, I had a good look at the egg sac:


And then I thought about all the dissecting in biology classes I did in my youth...

Nice scalpel, eh?

And what was inside?

Wow, that looks just like green cavier!

I wonder if it tastes like cavier...?

And just to add to your heebie-jeebie quotient for the day let me add this: When I got back from the chiro, the huntsman was gone! I searched and searched, but the blokette was nowhere to be found. Full-on spray with spider killing stuff... and she walked away...

Somewhere out there is a really pissed off sheila huntsman who's gunna git me!

Here's a question for those of you who've made it this far (although I think someone in Akron, Ohio left the room screaming quite a while back): Do you think Dingo Dave now knows whether or not huntsman spider eggs taste like cavier? Comments are now open.

Happy Halloween!