Arachnophobia

August 8, 2003 7:24 PM

The Itsy-Bitsy Spider. I was looking online to try and identify the freaking huge spiders I saw today (possibly wolf spiders), and I came across this hand spider identification chart. Slightly unnerving when the spiders randomly wiggle. Perhaps more so if you have a problem with spiders.
posted by kayjay (71 comments total)

I started to freak out until I realized these are all Australian natives. Whew. In Brooklyn we just worry about rats. Rats and muggers.
posted by gwint at 7:33 PM on August 8, 2003

Some are found elsewhere in the world. Wolf spiders, for example, are also native to Wisconsin.
posted by kayjay at 7:38 PM on August 8, 2003

I am so, so, so, so incredibly NOT clicking on this one.

There. Now you know my deep dark secret.
posted by scarabic at 7:42 PM on August 8, 2003

If you're at all arachnophobic or squeamish about tissue necrosis, you MUST NOT click on this blog of a woman bitten by a brown recluse spider. Via this MeFi thread.
posted by stonerose at 7:46 PM on August 8, 2003

O.K.
posted by scarabic at 7:57 PM on August 8, 2003

Thanks stonerose. I clicked and am now completely grossed out. You warned, but I couldn't resist.
posted by birdherder at 8:06 PM on August 8, 2003

birdherder... I know. I'm guilty. Still, it's fascinating and humbling. And I love that she was open to both modern and traditional treatments.
posted by stonerose at 8:09 PM on August 8, 2003

Warning for the Orb-Weaver:

"..the fright of this spider crawling over one's face can be terrifying and may cause a heart attack"
posted by stbalbach at 8:13 PM on August 8, 2003

brown recluse spiders have to be just about the nastiest thing in existence...
posted by cohappy at 8:21 PM on August 8, 2003

Hey kids, Goodling for "necrotic arachnidism" yields the most revolting photo, ever (with the exception of those on a rotten website that shall remain unnamed.)
posted by stonerose at 8:44 PM on August 8, 2003

Googling. Not Goodling, which, of course, returns only morally upstanding search results. Argh.
posted by stonerose at 8:47 PM on August 8, 2003

While the BRS may be the most dangerous, the camel spider (discussed in an earlier thread) is way, way, way scarier. The thing can move 30mph, for Christ's sake!
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 9:05 PM on August 8, 2003

OK, that's why I don't live in Australia......
posted by maggie at 9:06 PM on August 8, 2003

I was bitten by a black widow this July 4th. In addition to the pleasant effects of the venom, did you know that spiders have all sorts of nasty bacteria on their fangs. Can you say "6 weeks of invasive antibiotic treatment"? I knew you could.

Yeeccccccccccccccccccccccccchhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

I've already discussed my wolf spider experience here. I'm beginning to think they're testing my defenses in preparation for a full scale assault. Where's Shatner when I need him?
posted by WolfDaddy at 9:14 PM on August 8, 2003

Had a beetle walking across our basement floor, on the other side of the room. He was plodding along, and I had my hands full, so I wasn't in a position to squish it right away, so I started talking trash to it, intending to kill it after emptying my hands.

No need. Giant hairy spider comes out from under a pallette, hauls ass across the floor, lays waste to the beetle, and high-tails it back under the pallette in about 1/10 of a second.

Wolf spider. Seriously, if you haven't seen one of these things in action, trust me, they are cheetah fast, and startling big. I left the little assassin down there, thinking of it as a hairy little labor saving device.

Haven't seen any more wolf spiders since.

Then again, I haven't seen one other bug bigger than the period at the end of this sentence since, either.

I figure if any of those brown recluse spiders show up, my wolf spider will ruin their plans for basement domination.
posted by dglynn at 9:18 PM on August 8, 2003

Civil_Disobedient: Wow - amazing little video clip. Nasty, nasty creatures, those things are.

O/T: the narrator sounded kinda like Stephen Hawking...
posted by davidmsc at 9:58 PM on August 8, 2003

F'ing spiders. I hate them. All of them. I'd never live in no-man's land out in the midwest anyway, but it's a big reason why I'm sticking to NYC for the rest of my life. Places like Australia and states along the southern coast will serve me well for vacation time, but I'll never move in. I would never survive finding something with more legs than my cat in the house.
posted by tomorama at 10:01 PM on August 8, 2003

I had an interesting wolf-spider experience. In my case it was getting out of the shower to the sound of women screaming. It was a Saturday morning, and a neighbor lady was visiting with my wife. At this particular time they were in my basement shrieking at the top of their collective lungs. They have very good lungs.

I ran down-stairs all wet with a robe thrown hastily around myself, to find them clinging to each other, gibbering, and motioning helplessly at the biggest spider I've ever seen. Now, I grew up in Texas, tarantula country, and I've seen some big spiders.

This spider, I kid you not, was approximately 9 inches across (when measured from leg-tip to leg-tip just sitting there on our basement wall). The body was just slightly smaller in diameter than my fist. It is, without a doubt, the coolest spider I have ever seen.

I resisted my wife's urging to smash and destroy the thing at all costs, and instead caught it in a clear pitcher (with lid). After duct-taping the pitcher closed, my wife consented to leave the thing alive long enough to try to figure out what kind of spider it was. Three (amazed) exterminators later, we find a fellow that tells us matter-of-factly that it's a wolf spider, and that wolf spiders can reach amazing size if left alive for a long time in a food-rich environment. I don't know how food-rich our basement is, but I'm pretty sure that spider must have been older than some of my children.

Two of the exterminators took pictures, and then we let our daughter take it to school to show her science teacher. Alas, my wife was completely unwilling to let the creature go anywhere near our house, so we resolved to take it out into the woods. Unfortunately, by the time our daughter returned from school, it had expired, apparently left in the sun on a class-room window sill where the temperatures became too much for our eight-legged friend.

We now have a contract with a local exterminator, who visits our house about once a month for a very reasonable price. We found the (apparent) mate to the first spider about a month later (smaller fellow, about the size of a big, hairy tarantula), and he made it quite safely out into our back yard. Since then, we haven't seen many spiders of any sort, and I'm quite sure we no longer have a food-rich environment for wolf spiders.
posted by Lafe at 10:03 PM on August 8, 2003

My fear of spiders is hard for me to understand. I see a snake, people are freaking out over it, I can calmly use a limb to keep the head away from me, pick it up by the tail and relocate it. The snake might be a cottonmouth or something else that could potentially _kill_ me if it was able to bite me, yet I am not a bit nervous about it.

Yet when I see even the most harmless little spider, inside the house, I tend to either throw large objects at it, jump on it with my shoes on like it is some giant beast, or get a wad of toilet paper big enough to wipe an elephant's ass and "catch" it in that...all the while paranoid that it will get out and end up on my hand.

Recently I was sitting here at my computer when I felt something on my leg. I glanced down and it was a damn brown recluse (or a look-alike, there are a spiders that mimick it and only an expert can tell the difference) crawling merrily towards my knee. I freaked. Jumped up, banged my knee so hard that it had a visible bruise for over a week, spilled the drink I had sitting next to me, and could not go to sleep for hours afterwards, even though I killed the miserable thing.

The _only_ spiders that I like are the big yellow garden spiders that I sometimes see in summer. They do not look that much like other spiders, they are somewhat pretty and they lack the furry/beady-eyed look that some spiders have. Or maybe it is just because they are always outside and are so big usually that I'd have to be blind to miss them. I don't know.
posted by bargle at 10:23 PM on August 8, 2003

Wolf Spiders.... really creepy fact about some of them is that they have eyeshine. You know, like a cat's eyes and a lot of other varmints you see at night? So you can shine a light towards the ground, not too bright though, and you might see these tiny pinprick eyes looking up at you. Heh.
posted by bargle at 10:32 PM on August 8, 2003

You know, part of my very great fear of spiders is due to Rod Serling's Night Gallery. The tale called "A Fear of Spiders" made a very strong impression on my 6-year old brain...

Be sure to play the theme song (Windows Media Audio blah blah blah) while ... appreciating ... the art.

Mulder and Scully couldn't hold a candle to Serling.
posted by WolfDaddy at 10:54 PM on August 8, 2003

Bargle,

I could never even consider handling a poisonous snake.

In Florida spiders are a part of everyday life...not my favorite part.

Last year, late on a sweltering night at a little old, funky, waterfront motel in Carrabelle, for the first time in my life I came upon a black widow. It had the unmistakable red hourglass on the abdomen and everything. It was late on a sweltering, muggy night. She (I believe it's the females that are the big ones) was in a big, chaotic web right on the garbage can under the light by the coke machine . There was the smaller male right there in the web with her, but at a safe distance presumably so as not to become her next meal? I didn't want to kill them, cuz spiders have a place in the world, right? I also didn't want to leave them there right on the sidewalk where people pass all the time and could easily be bitten. I grabbed a nearby fallen pine limb that was about three feet long and twirled the limb around the whole web, gathering both spiders in it, kinda like they do cotton candy at the fair. So now I have two black widows on a stick. The female started hurrying up the stick at my hand as I started towards some nearby trees. I started running so I could get them away from the traveled area, the whole time watching her run up the limb. I got about twenty yards before I had to ditch them. My heart was racing pretty good by the time I let them go, but it wasn't from the sprint.
posted by wsg at 12:04 AM on August 9, 2003

Oh, the blog lady lives in my area. She drove to "Sauk Prairie Memorial Hospital in Sauk City, WI." I bet her reaction to the bite wouldn't have been quite as bad if she hadn't held off on seeking medical attention for quite as long.

Positive that my sighting today wasn't a brown recluse, however, I am not quite sure that it was a wolf. Partly because there were four of them--three really big ones and one slightly less big. I've read the wolf spiders tend to be solitary. I've also read that they are nocturnal and like areas with good site lines, avoiding areas of high vegetation. This was in high sun, in an area full of rocks and tall weeds, right be a river.

They looked a little like the photos of wolf spiders I've seen, but not exactly. Needless to see, I'm going to be a bit more careful about where I sit while on break from now on. I like spiders, but I so don't want to deal with the aftermath of sitting on one.
posted by kayjay at 12:08 AM on August 9, 2003

What's up with the question mark after "meal"? Doh!
posted by wsg at 12:09 AM on August 9, 2003

OK, after a bit more Googling, I am lead back to the notion that I did indeed see wolf spiders. I did get to watch one of them jump about two inches into the air after a low-flying wasp. Another of them only had 6 legs. Four on one side, but two missing legs on the other. Obviously a tough little bastard. (I suppose a couple of toothpicks could have made it into Peg-leg the Spider.)

No matter how much I love spiders, seeing that many Bigg-Ass spiders in one place...a place you normally sit for breaks...not relaxing.
posted by kayjay at 12:28 AM on August 9, 2003

Oh, and another spider gallery for y'all.
posted by kayjay at 12:30 AM on August 9, 2003

Another time I was at a rest stop on an interstate when I saw a wasp fly into a spider web. The wasp was fighting to get out of the web while the spider was attacking. I watched as the wasp broke free of the web and flew off with the spider holding on. It all happened in about 5ive seconds.
posted by wsg at 12:47 AM on August 9, 2003

I was looking at the site while sitting in bed, and my husband, half-asleep, looked over.

Once he saw the spiders move, he was quite awake. And on the other side of the room.

Heh.
posted by Katemonkey at 1:28 AM on August 9, 2003

If I ever saw a 9" wolf spider I would die of terror as quickly as possible so I didn't have to look at it anymore. I am not kidding. One time a small tarantula crawled into my bedroom at night and I didn't sleep for about a month. I cannot imagine seeing a spider that size.

And beware they WILL run up your leg and go for your jugular, the tarantula discovered in my bedroom did just that to my roommates cat. Imagine a large white fluffy cat with a giant black spider crawling purposefully up it's chest hair in your house Took years off my life, that did.
posted by maggie at 2:48 AM on August 9, 2003

Years ago, I read an article that claimed that spiders are extra-terrestrial; so alien that many humans have an instinctive terror and loathing of them

Never found the article again, but it sure makes sense to me. Horrible things....
posted by Pericles at 3:08 AM on August 9, 2003

I knew I shouldn't have read this thread.

You know if we keep having weather like this heat wave in England for long enough, we might get huge fecking spiders here too. If that time ever comes, I'll be waving from Greenland.
posted by squealy at 4:06 AM on August 9, 2003

I like spiders!
posted by mcsweetie at 4:54 AM on August 9, 2003

me too
posted by ginz at 5:01 AM on August 9, 2003

My house is crawling with spiders. I like them - they eat the moth and other bugs.

What I worry about is the basement. They are thicker down there, and so other creatures have started to move in - first newts, and then a few days ago I found a big, beautiful tan and brown frog under a plastic milk crate on the floor. Now, I like frogs too but I worry that larger creatures which could pose a threat to me might move in to eat the frogs and so occupy this new niche in the food chain. Snakes, rats, badgers, wolverines? Who knows where it would end?

I dislike the thought of accidentally cornering a snarling animal with teeth and claws when I go down to do my laundry.

But spiders? What really freaks me out is when they crawl up my leg while I'm driving. This happened to me recently, and I almost ran into a toll booth from the distraction of whacking at my leg to drive off the damn bug. And any bug dropping on one's head has to be presumed guilty of being up to something bad. My wife had a cockroach drop on her head once while driving. She almost went off the road. I had transported a messy friend's furniture in my Volvo wagon, and the roaches must have crept out into the car to feast on the crumbs. Those roaches had been selected bred for superior strength, speed, fecundity, and poison resistance by my friend's numerous but half assed roach bomb attacks (gas attacks, Weapons of Mass Roach Destruction - WMRD attacks, that is). They were small brown, agile, lithe and incredibly quick. Probably pretty smart too, as far as roaches go.

Anyway, we set off a whole pack of roach bombs inside the car (windows down). Some still survived this, and we had to repeat the procedure two more times to kill all of the little bastards. Ahimsa stops somewhere for almost all. In "The Chasm of Fire", (by Irina Tweedie) Mrs. Tweedie's Sufi master and guru explains, after casting out a demon from a man possessed - and in the process threatening to burn to oblivion the demon's entire family if it repossessed the man, that all creatures have their allegiances and that his was to the human race. So too, with me and roaches.
posted by troutfishing at 6:10 AM on August 9, 2003

here in chile, the only poisonous spider that i know of looks small and inoffensive - my partner's grandfather died from a bite, but that was largely the fault of a bad country doctor who didn't get him to the hospital for several days. we do have a fairly large brown hairy spider, called "pollito" (little chicken - no idea why), that's something of a national treasure, but isn't poisonous and is pretty timid (we find one in the house every few months and chuck it outside).

more worrying is a little tick that carries some weird disease that, years later, makes you prematurely senile... (i don't think i was being wound up about that).
posted by andrew cooke at 6:31 AM on August 9, 2003

You think the australian spiders are bad? Wait 'till you see the drop-bears...
posted by spazzm at 7:02 AM on August 9, 2003

I wasn't afraid of spiders. Until I read this thread. Thanks a lot.
posted by Samsonov14 at 9:58 AM on August 9, 2003

I came home from high school one day, reached in the mailbox, and saw some movement. I (quickly) withdrew my hand, got a closer look, and saw the shape of the spider therein. Ran down the driveway and into the garage, fetched a can of Raid and just about doused the entire interior of the mailbox. When I pulled out the still-dripping mail, I found a freshly dead black widow, with the hourglass and everything. Freaky.
posted by Vidiot at 10:43 AM on August 9, 2003

troutfishing: Would you buy a used car from this man?

Just kidding. I hate roaches too. Here in Hong Kong we have some pretty big roaches, and they can fly, which just adds to the fun.

As for spiders, thankfully the bigger orb weavers are all out in the hills, and not in the urbans areas (that I've yet seen).
posted by bwg at 10:56 AM on August 9, 2003

Damn, I forgot, here's a little piece I did on the orb-weaver I almost ran into face-first.

Yes, it's a self-link. Sorry.
posted by bwg at 11:01 AM on August 9, 2003

Can someone tell me if there are wolf spiders in Pennsylvania? If there are, please lie and say that there aren't. Thank you.
posted by iconomy at 11:09 AM on August 9, 2003

Now spazzm
They just wont get that
posted by johnny7 at 11:13 AM on August 9, 2003

holy christ, makes me glad to be living in Los Angeles, where nothing much lives, besides sparrows, seagulls, the odd squirrel, cockroaches, and people

never seen a spider bigger than a dime in LA. San Diego's a whole 'nother story though
posted by badzen at 11:55 AM on August 9, 2003

iconomy, Wolf spiders are everywhere in the contiguous United States except Pennsylvania. The Hamish prayed long and hard for God to eradicate and forbid their countenance in the territory, and that wall of magic exists to this day.

When I was growing up (rural Montana) we had a cold celler and the Black Widows just loved it in there. It took immense force of will to duck the webs as you went in for any jar or box, and you had to scrutinize every object for at least a minute before you picked it up. Gloves were a good idea ... Winter or Summer. I did learn over time that they really aren't interested in biting you. After all, you're too big to eat.
posted by Wulfgar! at 11:57 AM on August 9, 2003

Badzen : You've got to be kidding me about spiders and LA. Drive up to the canyons some time. I was lounging on our deck when I looked up at a nook between a tree branch and a wall -- goddamn black widow sitting and watching me. And I've woken up to seriously nasty looking mid-size hairy brown arachnids on my pillow. I've become a pro at motion detection in my peripheral vision these days.

Oh yeah, we also have coyotes and rattlesnakes here.
posted by synapse at 12:16 PM on August 9, 2003

Yay for the wall of magic! Thanks, Wulfgar! ;)
posted by iconomy at 12:16 PM on August 9, 2003

iconomy: The wolf spiders are the good ones! A house with wolf spiders is highly unlikely to have any brown recluses or black widows, which you do have in Pennsylvania. Wolf spiders eat 'em.

A wolf spider bite is not dangerous to humans. They're just scary looking. Especially when they get that big.

I just wish I had gotten a picture of that fellow...
posted by Lafe at 1:16 PM on August 9, 2003

Thanks a lot, everyone....I didn't look at any of the links, but I've still got things crawling all over me.

I keep alternately swiping at my arms and legs; my husband's looking over at me like I've suddenly developed Tourette's.
posted by Oriole Adams at 1:23 PM on August 9, 2003

I dislike the thought of accidentally cornering a snarling animal with teeth and claws when I go down to do my laundry.

We actually have had alternately an possum and a woodchuck break into our house at various points over the last three years. The possum was actually kind of funny. The cats were freaked out at having the biggest mouse they had ever seen in the house. Turns out it was all snarl and no fight. We set a cat carrier in front of it, pried it away from the corner with a canoe paddle and relocated it to a nice lake.

The woodchuck was another matter, for that we got a professional to trap it from our crawlspace.

At any rate, I've generally had a fondness for spiders. Wolf spiders are actually fun to play with on picnic tables and porches because they respond to vibration by turning towards you and raising their front legs (at least until you tap the table too hard, then they run away and tell everyone else about the big monster they survived.)
posted by KirkJobSluder at 1:29 PM on August 9, 2003

Cute spiders.
posted by OneSmartMonkey at 1:31 PM on August 9, 2003

brown recluses or black widows, which you do have in Pennsylvania.

On 4:16 PM, August 09, 2003, the blissful bubble of ignorance that I lived in was shattered forever.

Actually, Lafe, you're so enthusiastic about the little creeps that it's hard to hate you ;)
posted by iconomy at 1:37 PM on August 9, 2003

You are all sick, sick people for willingly living in countries where these things exist. A 9 inch spider? And those poisonous snakes, too. Gaddddd, I hate snakes. Hate hate hate. What's wrong with you all? Is this some kind of near-death experience thing? Picking up cottonmouths and black widows on sticks...?

Come live in the UK where it's 35 degrees on a pleasant summer's day and the most poisonous thing we've got is... ummm.... hell, our tabloid press.
posted by humuhumu at 2:06 PM on August 9, 2003

Pericles: Years ago, I read an article that claimed that spiders are extra-terrestrial; so alien that many humans have an instinctive terror and loathing of them

Me too! (meaning, I too read that article, not meaning that I am also extra-terrestrial, and so alien that many humans have an instinctive terror and loathing of me).

I should go look for that article. God, I hate spiders. Nasty little beasties... snakes, no problem, sure they're poisonous but at least they're not so different looking from safer forms of life. Even a wolverine or badger or what have you, mentioned in this thread, wouldn't be bad: at least it still would be like confronting a terribly vicious house pet or zoo animal, scary in a be-very-careful sort of way, but not primordially-fear-inducing like seeing spiders is. Augh!
posted by hincandenza at 2:55 PM on August 9, 2003

I can deal with small spiders. Big ones would probably freak me out (I've never really seen a big one).

The creepy crawly thing I can't stand are earwigs. They seriously, um, wig me out. Little fuckers. Hate hate hate them.
posted by eilatan at 4:44 PM on August 9, 2003

why is it that, reading this thread and listening to Radio Paradise, I suddenly hear the Eels singing, "There's a spider crawling on the bathroom mirror / Right on top of my right eye" Eeeew. Count me as archnophobic. Roaches, I don't like, but I can handle them. Rats? Used to have a couple as pets. Cute things. Snakes? Try to avoid the poisonous ones, but otherwise, they're fun. Was just playing with my nephew's pet snake last week. The tiniest little spider, though, will make me scream. Loudly. While waving my arms around and running away. Which, as someone else pointed out, is particularly problematic whilst driving.
posted by jburka at 7:10 PM on August 9, 2003

i live in arizona, and grew up on the outskirts of a not too big city where desert vegetation and wildlife are only occasionally interrupted by our human designs. so i have a few fun anecdotes about spiders:

my first terrible experience with spiders was in the kitchen sink. i went for a glass of water and came across a modest-sized wolf spider scrambling, but unable, to get out of the sink. i put any unwanted creatures outside, so i fetched a large cup and went to scoop the spider up. as soon as the cup touched the spider, the rear end of the arachnid exploded. hundreds of spiders spewed into the sink, so small they looked more like a finely woven piece of cloth spreading/weaving/growing itself over the metal. i panicked and washed 'em all down the drain. it was revolting.

then, late one night i was driving home from a movie. it's summertime and i had the top off my car. a few turns out of the parking lot, and as i'm zooming down a dark road with desert on both sides a spidery blob about the size of my fist begins to move up the windshield of my car. not knowing whether it was on the inside or outside, i skidded to a stop and hopped out. by then the thing had disappeared into the engine compartment and i had to drive home with thoughts of spiders bursing from the footspace and coursing up my legs. *shudder*

finally, i've found some weird-ass shit on my porches. my friends and i captured a slow-moving scorpion about 4 inches long that looked like something completely alien. i showed it around the block, and nobody had ever seen anything like it before, so we looked it up online and found out that it was a species of scorpion that is usually found in south america. how the hell it wound up in arizona is anybody's guess.

bugs are fun! i can understand why some people have a negative reaction to creatures that are so not-human-looking. it's easy to project human characteristics and behaviors on mammals and most animals with spines, and so be able to have a positive interaction with them, but spiders and many other exoskeletal creatures are just so alien that any reaction other than revulsion is hard.

anyway, thanks for the link! (too bad it's for Australia...)
posted by carsonb at 9:46 PM on August 9, 2003

I know Australians like to make out that they're in mortal danger from bites, stings and maimings from nasty critters, but some of the spiders in that link wouldn't look nearly as scary if the pics were to scale.

The St. Andrew Cross spider? That picture makes them look HUGE, but they're actually tiny (5 to 15mm body) and not very venomous at all. They're all over the place, but I've never actually seen one move either.

The Huntsman? Ok, they're big and hairy and frightening looking, but I've actually been bitten by one and it was a lot less painful than a bee-sting and I didn't get any of that necrotic tissue crap or anything.

Funnel-webs? Um, ok, huge, hairy and lethal...

spazzm - Well, that's why you should wear drop-bear inhibiting corks on your hat.
posted by backOfYourMind at 10:56 PM on August 9, 2003

You know, you're never more than four feet from a spider...
posted by cohappy at 11:39 PM on August 9, 2003

make that three feet...
posted by cohappy at 11:40 PM on August 9, 2003

On the Net, no one actually knows that you are a six foot long Wolf Spider with computer skills.

* Thank God, it's a lonely life otherwise *

* sighs *
posted by troutfishing at 8:58 AM on August 10, 2003

Thank god for Sweden. Our biggest spider, kärrspindeln [raft spider, Dolomedes fimbriatus], seldom reaches body lengths over 2.5 centimeters.
posted by soundofsuburbia at 9:15 AM on August 10, 2003

I actually like spiders for their habit of eating other bugs. I think of them as good luck in the house. I have made a little truse with them:

They stay off of my body, my bed, and out of my shower and don't build their webs in any really stupid places, and I will leave them alone. However, if they show up in any of the above places, all bets are off.

If they startle me, I generally can't control the "must fling/must kill" urge. Likewise, I know that if I startle one of them, the same urges may apply.
posted by kayjay at 2:14 PM on August 10, 2003

OneSmartMonkey--

Loved the smiley face spiders.
posted by kayjay at 2:14 PM on August 10, 2003

From cohappy's link:

"Scientists estimate we're never more than three feet from a spider. That's because some are microscopic, and actually live RIGHT ON YOU."

Excuse me. I need to go take a scalding hot shower for a few hours.
posted by Stauf at 5:43 PM on August 10, 2003

I'm sitting here in absolute terror now. My cat just ran into the room and I damn near hit the ceiling with fear because I'm so jumpy right now, and I thought she was a huge black spider sent here to kill me.

I doubt I'll be sleeping tonight
posted by mabelcolby at 6:36 PM on August 10, 2003

Spiders on drugs.
posted by lazaruslong at 7:42 PM on August 10, 2003

synapse -- yah, i tend to forget the canyons exist at times... I'm in Culver City, and rarely get up into the hills these days. We've got some spiders around here, but nothing dangerous and nothing big.

though i did see a pack of coyotes last time I was in Silverlake...
posted by badzen at 10:09 PM on August 10, 2003

I'd already be a Buddhist if it weren't for all these damn spiders.
posted by WolfDaddy at 11:55 PM on August 10, 2003

i just don't understand arachnophobia. as far as i'm concerned, we humans are bigger. if a spider poses a problem, you just step on it. end of spider. especially if it's the harmless spiders we have here in montreal. see, i can understand being phobic of say a bear, or a shark or a tiger. these animals are big and can kill us quite easily. even these crazy 9" spiders you refer to are much smaller than my shoe.

my wife is severely arachnophobic. she almost caused me to drive off the road once when a spider showed up in the car. went into a complete blind panic. any spider she claims to see is at least 4 times it's actual size. she'd probably die of fright if she saw those wolf spiders.
posted by xmattxfx at 9:57 AM on August 11, 2003

matt, I think a big part of the fear of spiders is due to the fact that they are small (and common). Yeah, a bear or a tiger can be pretty dangerous and intimidating, but when was the last time you found one in your living room.

A spider could be anywhere: in your shoe, under the covers when you get into bed, in the shower, etc. Hell, there could be a good-sized one sitting on your head right now.

*brushes head off*
posted by Stauf at 11:16 AM on August 11, 2003

xmattxfx:

brown recluse. The fuckers came straight out of an Alien movie, I'm telling ya... [Warning - the images at the bottom are very graphic]
posted by cohappy at 1:14 AM on August 24, 2003