I Don't Like Spiders
There's a spider on my wall and it's staring at me. Should I:
a) Kill it.
b) Kill it, because some of them jump. It could jump on you.
b) Kill it before it shoots a strand of web from it's butt and attaches itself to you.
d) Spray it with RAID.
e) Spraying it with RAID doesn't kill it right away, giving it time to plan a strategy. Swat it with a newspaper and make a run for it.
f) Just kill it already.
g) Don't kill it. Spiders are useful. They get rid of flies and other insects.
h) There aren't any flies or other insects around. Kill it.
I read a great article in The New Yorker about spiders. It's scary, creepy, and fascinating; and, I learned things about spiders that I really didn't want to know. Note to self: Call exterminator. Fumigate basement. ASAP. You might want to skip the part about the girl who drank from a can and swallowed a Black Widow Spider. I wish I did before I opened up a can of gingerale.
The article is Spider Woman by Burkhard Bilger - March 5, 2007 (pdf format) and it's about an arachnologist who has found some of the world's deadliest spiders in the basements of buildings in New York City (Hey Capt!) and Los Angeles. They're called Loxosceles and there are over 1,000 species of them. The Brown Recluse is a Loxosceles. The good news is the chance of getting bitten by one is very slim and they don't prey on humans anyway (yet). The bad news is there's a slim chance of getting bitten by one.
From "Spider Woman":
"One Dutch researcher estimates that there are some five trillion spiders in the Netherlands alone, each of which consumes about a tenth of a gram of meat a day. Were their victims people instead of insects, they would need only three days to eat all sixteen and a half million Dutchmen."
My mom told me that my fear of spiders began when I was about 5 or 6 and we went camping. I purposely stepped on a Daddy Long-Legger to see it squish. Right at that moment, another one started crawling toward me. I freaked out and told my mom that it was chasing me because it saw me kill his friend. That was probably what planted the seed of my arachnophobia.
But what I fear the most also fascinates me, as long as it's at a distance or behind glass. There's an Insect Zoo at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC that's pretty cool. It has the biggest spider in the world there, the Goliath Bird Eating Spider (Hey SudieGirl, go check it out!). I could tap on the glass and there was nothing it could do about it. Ha! Me - 1, Bird Eating Spider - 0.
Gratuitous Scary Spider Pic
National Geographic has a short video of the Goliath Bird Eating Spider. Spoiler Alert: The mouse doesn't win.
Here are some other things I found interesting, but you might not because you probably haven't read down this far since my posts get long sometimes. Anyway, there are spiders that live in the Antarctic called Vampire Sea Spiders (they couldn't call them Friendly-But-Funny-Looking Spiders, of course it had to be "vampires").
Here's another one: What's scarier than a mutant 4-legged spider found near Three Mile Island? The fact that I lived near TMI almost my entire life and swam in the Susquehanna River almost every summer (downstream too). More photos of TMI "oddities" that scare me, but not in a good way (skip the plant photos and scroll down to the two-headed calf).
I'm sorry if I creeped out anyone (not really). It's almost Halloween and that's one of my favorite times of the year. I couldn't resist. Tune in tomorrow for my post, "Psycho Killers: Is Your Neighbor Really Carrying Trash in that Garbage Bag?"
