Darn blankety-blank spider!

[MimzMum]

Okay, I just missed smashing a spider that was near Mimzy’s habitat and I’ve no idea where it scuttled off to. *@!#%*!! It could’ve been some kind of hobo spider, but I know we don’t really have any venomous spiders here in Alaska.

http://www.epi.hss.state.ak.us/bulletins/docs/b2000_17.htm

I’m not worried about me, (although my daughter is now on high alert) I fear for the bunnies or the dog getting bitten overnight. I doubt it’s going to give me another chance at grinding it into the carpet. Would a simple house spider bite be deadly to the bunnies due to their size?

Should’ve had my electric zapper out instead of relying on the old paper towel crush trick. ~_~ GAH!

(now has the Who’s ‘Boris the Spider’ running through her head)

Look, he’s crawling up my wall
Black and hairy, very small
Now he’s up above my head
Hanging by a little thread

Boris the spider
Boris the spider

Now he’s dropped on to the floor
Heading for the bedroom door
Maybe he’s as scared as me
Where’s he gone now, I can’t see

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

There he is wrapped in a ball
Doesn’t seem to move at all
Perhaps he’s dead, I’ll just make sure
Pick this book up off the floor

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

He’s come to a sticky end
Don’t think he will ever mend
Never more will he crawl ’round
He’s embedded in the ground

Boris the spider
Boris the spider

[LizzieKnittyBun]

HA! I just lol’d!

[brittbritt]

I hate spiders so much. Two nights ago I was up extra late and noticed one larger than normal scuttling across the floor. I was up and grabbing a shoe faster than I normally am. Luckily I squished it quickly. I hate when they get away. I always imagine them making it to my bedroom.

[MimzMum]

My daughter has always been the arachnophobe in the house. I think her fear is contagious though. I usually don’t wig out on smaller spiders…but these ones that are at least nickel size in diameter really creep me out.

lolz…Your post reminded me of a flare one of my son’s friends had on FB…”Here, spider, niiice spider…let me pet you…WITH MY SHOE!

[LizzieKnittyBun]

lol

I grew up in Florida and lived in New Orleans… spiders are *nothing* compared to cockroaches.

[MimzMum]

Meh, I’ve seen small cockroaches before and while they are gross, I guess they just don’t affect me the way spiders do. I think it’s because spiders remind me of crabs, which terrify me.
I don’t know how I’m going to sleep tonight…I’m spooking at every thing I have to lift up or look under/behind/around.
I know one of our past members lost a bunny about a year or two ago to a spider bite too. And that’s got me completely paranoid.

I can remember opening my bedroom window years ago and a GIANT SPIDER BUTT falling from my sill to the ground below. It made an audible “thump.” I swear it was the size of a ping pong ball and I expected it to bounce back up in my window like one! 0_o Think of THAT bugger crawling around on your pillow at night looking to lay eggs in your brain!
Like Jungle to Jungle…does anyone remember that?

Mimi: “If you quiet, Matika nice…if you scream…Matika attack.”

Mimi: Stop shouting, baboon! Matika kill chief! [Receptionist looks at them]
Michael: Catch the damn spider, will you?! (Mimi puts away Matika) I said I was gonna go fight the chief. Not kill the chief. Around here, only… postal employees kill chief. Got it?

I’m telling you, it’s getting so ALL spiders look like MATIKA to me! X_X

[LizzieKnittyBun]

I think you might change your mind if a think, 2-inch long wood roach *flew* straight at you from a tree whilst trying to get into your house THROUGH THE DOORWAY.

True story.

[MimzMum]

Oh, I’ll go you one better…
Have you ever heard of something called a spruce beetle? LOOONG black bodies, some about an inch long, others longer, and antennae that you’d swear look like they’re three FEET long…and they love to get tangled in long hair! These nasties have sent both me and my daughter screaming and pulling at our hair because once they get caught in it it’s almost impossible to get them out..and the whole time they’re stuck there they are making these creepy click-click noises…sounds like something right out of Hitchcock is crawling right at your neck. Like Lilliputian Aliens, they are!

Or our cursed mozzies…geeze, this year it’s like being attacked by a couple dozen miniature flying piranhas in your eyes and nose and mouth and ears…or anywhere else they can manage to kamikaze their way into….AAAARRGGHHH! It’s like a pack mentality too…they’ll be following you in a squadron (you can hear them humming like a bunch of angry bees) and two or four of them will break off and circle round you to jam themselves in your face and make you stop walking so the rest of the little demons can mob you from behind. Needless to say, walks with Jenna are true peril this summer.

[LizzieKnittyBun]

okay bugs…. the lack of which is one of the many reasons I live in Colorado.

::full body shudder::

You should think about writing, because that description had my jaw dropped in horror.

[LittlePuffyTail]

Ewww..

I’m okay with small spiders…I’m a horse girl after all, but them big ones that look like they should be in a pet shop!! Not so good. The worse is the ones with the big buggle butts. Gross. I think I’m going to go clean my house now!!!!

This Spring I’ve been finding some gigantic ones in my basement. Yuck. Never found any in the rabbit room. It’s really sunny and open in there. Not a good spider hang-out. I hate how spiders just look so sinister. We are lucky in that we don’t have any venomous ones here in the East Coast.

[Beka27]

ICK!!!!!!!!! I hate spiders! The worst was the time I was sitting at the computer and saw what I thought was a poop rolling across the floor (you know… a normal occurrence in our house) and looked down and it was a gigantic spider with a body the size of a poop… running quickly across the floor!

Bleh!!!!!!

[LizzieKnittyBun]

One time I was lying on my stomach in my parents’ room watching tv (I was rather young) and I felt something scuttle across the bottom of my foot…

I turned around, and there was a big ole’ spider making his way across the room after having nonchalantly crawled across my foot.

::horror::

[Malp_15]

Spruce beetles are the worst!!! Ahh! And they ALWAYS fly at your face.

Mimz Ive had them get stuck in my hair as a kid too

[Stickerbunny]

Most common house spiders do not have fangs long enough to penetrate multiple layers of skin, let along fur + skin. So probably your animals are fine! If it was a brown recluse, black widow, etc it could be a problem though. Not sure what you have in Alaska. The ones that can penetrate that much typically have weak venom meant to paralyze bugs and such which can’t hurt an animal that weighs a few pounds or more, so I would think a rabbit would be fine, I know the dog is. I grew up in Florida, so we learned to quickly identify the dangerous spiders from the harmless ones and the harmless just got put back outside to eat the wasps/mosquitos/flies. Good luck finding it though, they usually like to crawl up on the ceiling in dark corners. :s

[MimzMum]

Beka…BWAHAHA…your daily rolling poop is here! That gave me a good chuckle! ^_^

I have had them walk right across my foot too, Lizzy…yeah…NOT my favorite thing. And how is it that Colorado has been blessed with no bugs? Doesn’t sound possible. 0_o You’re making it up.

LPT…lol…buggle butts…now that sounds like a good new nickname for my bunnies. xD

Malp…Where did you live that there were spruce beetles? I’ve only seen them here in Alaska. They are devastating our forests.

Stickerbunny…thanks for the info. We don’t have recluse here, or black widow. Thankful for that. I have run into a widow before when I lived in Pismo Beach. My cat was playing with one in the garage, I was lucky he didn’t actually get bitten. I think I pounded that one with a flyswatter for a good 15 minutes to be sure it was killed dead.
Yeah, it’s not likely I’m going to see that one from last night anytime soon, but believe me, when I do…POW!

I guess it’s not so bad. After all, I could’ve seen this one….

http://www.arizona.indymedia.org/news/2004/05/17950.php

(reminds me of my daughters’ wide angle lens that she sees all bugs with. They have a tendency to gravitate towards her and to her they are always ten times bigger than anyone else sees them)

[Huckleberry]

BLECH! Spiders freak me out. I am handling them better though than I used to. The worst was when my family lived in the flatter part of OK. Our house seemed to have been built right on top of Aragog’s nest. There were large wolf spiders all over the place, the smaller ones around the size of a quarter, the largest ones the size of a grapefruit. My cat made it a game to hunt them. One day she sat in the hall watching me as I got out of the shower, with 5 legs (each about 3 inches long) wiggling around her mouth. She got a can of tuna that night.

[Malp_15]

I live smack dab in the middle of BC Prince George is the spruce capital of the world (at least it was when I was a kid ) so lots of beetles 😐 on road trips as a kid my dad would make me roll up the windows when we were behind a logging truck carrying spruce cuz every once in a while a beetle would let go and come flying in your window. One of the scarier things to happen in my lifetime

The pine beetle is devastating our forests right now. Lots of people out of work.

[Monkeybun]

Ugh I remember that, driving through the mountains, seeing all the dead trees.. its sad I remember how beautiful it was when I was little.

Spiders are my arch enemy, I tell ya. Smudge’s too. She thumps at them.

[Kokaneeandkahlua]

LOL Mimz I know how you feel-I spent hours chasing a wasp because I was sure a bunny was going to get stung. If it’s not insanely cold, and it’s finally warmed up and their is daylight-we get spanked with bugs. *sigh* …..Colorado has no bugs hey?

[LizzieKnittyBun]

Colorado has very few! I’m not the only one who feels this way. One of my good friends told me so before we moved here. We do have tiny little spiders that sometimes get inside, and the occasional fly, but our apartment is pretty bug-free.

I visited my hometown in Florida a week ago and was reminded of the bugs we have there… GAH!

[MimzMum]

NO bugs? Not even fleas? 0_o
My daughter would move there, but you still have the spiders. lol…

[LizzieKnittyBun]

Y’know… I’m not really sure about the fleas!

: D

[LittlePuffyTail]

OMG, if I saw a spider the size of a grapefruit I think I would scream like a little girl!!!!

[stinkybinky]

Ugh! yesterday a lizard went into my rabbit pen! Binksy seems to love spiders, one time he went somewhere he wasn’t supposed to and my mom said he had a spider on his face and didn’t know..I ammm super phobic of spiders T_T chills

[MimzMum]

Well I got him, finally! (at least I think it was the same spider)
He’d made the mistake of perching on a cardboard box in my living room that was within sight of me, and easy reach of more paper towels. *SPLAT*

In the meantime, I’ve had to smash at least half a dozen OTHER spiders in the house…they’ve all got it in for me! 0_o

[LizzieKnittyBun]

Girl power!

[BinkyBunny]

I’m normally spider friendly as they catch so many other bugs I don’t like. We have so many different types around here though and fast moving brown and black ones give me the creeps, so I usually escort them out of the house to kill bugs outside. There are two spiders that I really can’t stand that scare the heck out of me. Black widows of course and then those garden spiders that are tan with black patterns, big big bodies that can grow so huge and make webs on your plants. AHHHCK!

We also have funnel spiders. I found one on the side of my shoe. I thought it was a little cotton ball stuck to the side of my shoe and I touched it and a spider came out! And he moved at lightening speed. I lost him and later found another cotton ball web on the corner of a kitchen wall.

One time while I was on a shuttle bus, a beautiful (yet scary) white very fuzzy spider (with a black face) came down out of no where. I have never seen a spider like that before…ever. I quickly scooted over and made Steve trade places with me. He thought it was the coolest spider he had ever seen and he let it just continue on down beside him and it crawled away. Yikes!

There is one spider though that I actually really like. I’m sure I am now entering the weirdo zone here, but ever since I was a kid, I really like Daddy long-legs. They are slow, spindly and wobbly and easy to handle. I will have no problem picking them up and putting them in a safer place. They are my favorite because I think they can kill and eat other pesty spiders. They are also a great natural pesticide that don’t become pests themselves. Not that I have teams of daddy long legs but if I see one in the house, I will not take it out if I see that it has built a web that would be likely to catch other bugs, like mosquitoes, moths, fruit flies, other spiders, etc that I don’t want in the house.

[LizzieKnittyBun]

I just had this bizarre and extremely amusing mental image of you hustling platoons of daddy long legs around your house…

[MimzMum]

That’s funny you should say that, BB, because I actually have no quarrel with Daddy Long Legs spiders. I just have an ongoing argument with my kids about whether they are 1) poisonous or 2) even a true spider?
I used to ‘escort’ our house-guests outdoors, but with how absolutely manic my daughter gets at the sight of one, a lot of times they don’t make it. I have let a few stay as well and tried to educate her gently about their usefulness, but honestly, when a creepy crawly goes anywhere near my animals or tries to make a nest out of my pillows or bedding…well…that’s my limit…sorry! And that’s ANY bug. I wouldn’t have a butterfly for a roommate either.

I have seen the pix of funnel spiders…yeeesh. You are way more generous than I would be. I don’t like the looks of those buggers! At. All.

[LizzieKnittyBun]

heh, buggers! I see what you did there ; )

[BinkyBunny]

Posted By LizzieKnittyBun on 07/09/2011 12:30 AM
I just had this bizarre and extremely amusing mental image of you hustling platoons of daddy long legs around your house…

yep! and this is how it goes around here, “DLL squad will be stationed there in kitchen, and the rest of you spindly spider wantabes…march!

Mimz –My understanding about daddy long legs is that there are two different kinds — one type is considered a spider while the other type is not.  The one that is considerd a spider is  supposedly poisonous (though that too can be debated), but not dangerous to humans. They are the ones we typically see in our homes.  Meaning,  the DLLs that we typically see in our homes are actually spiders.  They aren’t aggressive at all and I doubt would bite a bunny (they’d have to get to a vulnerable spot like the ear, but I have a feeling they’d be scratched off before they even tried.) 

I have also read that they can bite humans, even though it is said their mouths are too small.  I read somewhere about myth busters doing something with a DLL s and they did get it to bite but it wasn’t deadly like everyone thought. Can’t imagine what human thought it was a good idea to test it out though.  However, if I am going to be handling DLL’s I should probably really check that out.      Though from what I have read no human has ever been harmed by a daddy long leg spider. 

[LizzieKnittyBun]

I used to play with them as a child. Also, roly-poly bugs. Apparently some people call them pill bugs?

I found one on the kitchen floor the other day and put him outside to rescue him.

[LittlePuffyTail]

Okay, thank you BB for that lovely spider post…now I have the willies…..

[MimzMum]

lolz @ LPT … ‘willies’ lol….Now I have that other song going through my head, “Little Willie-Willie won’t…go home!”

In trying to imagine a DDL with a mouth the size of which could administer a bite to a human I am getting some awfully funny mental images. Like something from those “Minuscule” shorts on Disney Channel.

Pill bugs! xD I remember those! They were legion at my house while I was growing up and then the fruit flies hit California and the whole Bay Area was subjected to malathion spraying. It was like Apocalypse Now every night with the Rite of the Valkyries playing in my head in tune with the helicopter blades….ugh! What misery that was! We lost a lot of bugs, good, bad and indifferent to that malfeasance.

BB, do you even hear crickets anymore down there? I missed the crickets terribly after all that poison killed them all.

[LizzieKnittyBun]

I no longer like crickets, since I found one in a bag of salad greens I bought from the store. Of course, they were already in a bowl and I had taken a bite *before* I found the dead cricket.

Cue girly scream.

[BinkyBunny]

Posted By MimzMum on 07/09/2011 05:24 PM

BB, do you even hear crickets anymore down there? I missed the crickets terribly after all that poison killed them all.

Interesting. Now that you mention it…no, no crickets chirping and it’s 9pm… and I rarely ever see any here.   When we go camping I can swear I remember hearing crickets, but maybe not…..

[MimzMum]

Liz, when I was a youngster, my folks and I would go out to dinner at least once a month, and always a different restaurant, unless we found one we really enjoyed alot. We went to Denny’s one night and I’d ordered a salad. I’d got halfway through when I found a DEAD BEE in it.

Cue girly SPEW! :X

Needless to say, we never went there again. And I remember my dad making a big stink about it too. The manager was falling all over himself trying not to get sued.

My cricket story is about how my son used to have one of those anole lizards. Of course, they need crickets and mealworms to eat. We ALWAYS lost at least one cricket each time we fed him. And of course, WHERE did the cricket usually decide to show up at a few days later? You guessed it…my pillow. (yiiiiiaaaahhhh!)

Still, the sound of crickets is so soothing. And I’m sad that there still is no cricket sound at night where you are,BB. Come to think of it, we only have those grasshoppers here, but they make a kind of buzzing noise about midday. I haven’t heard any of them either. In fact, I haven’t seen more than one hopping around this year.
I wonder if these kinds of noisemaking insects are dying out en masse or something? And yet I heard (no pun intended) that the cicadas were nice and loud back east this spring.

[LizzieKnittyBun]

Yeah, I gotta admit… I’m not a huge fan of bug noises, but I loooove to listen to the rain : )

[Kate Monster]

That’s funny LKB, I used to live in Colorado and I totally remember finding black widow spiders all the dang time.  But we were out in deserty type Colorado, so maybe it’s different there.  Although I do miss the lack of common annoying bugs like mosquitos and the like.

For the most part I actually rather like bugs, especially spiders.  I think the little ones that hop are kinda cute, my bf says I’m nuts. But for some reason they like my feet a lot, I have no idea why but I wake up with spider bites on my feet fairly regularly, only my feet and they never bite my boyfriend, I also seriously hate feet, so go figure. 

There are two bugs that I really, really hate.  The first is pet store crickets.  I like natural, outdoor, wild ones just fine, but pet store crickets just freak me out.  I had pet tree frogs as a kid and one day I came home to find that the crickets had mostly eaten one of them (he seemed healthy and hoppy when I left for school, but I have no idea if he died during the day and they ate him or if they ganged up on him when he hid under the mat that covered the bottom which he did often, either way, ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww), it remains one of my most vivid and upsetting childhood memories.  And I HATE earwigs.  We had a serious infestation one summer.  Our mail box was so full of them that when you opened the door they would just start pouring out.  Our mail person refused to deliver our mail for month because of it.  I also managed to suck one through the straw of my water bottle, found them in clothing I had just put on, and found them on my bath towel.  As far as I know, they aren’t dangerous they’re just creepy and I’ve found them in way too many inappropriate and wiggins inducing places to handle them any more.

I loved rolly pollies as a kid too, my friend and I used to hang out in the basement and collect them.

[BinkyBunny]

 OHHH!  I forgot, thanks Kate…EARWIGS!  That is the one bug that I really freak out on.  Hate those things. And they are just like you said Kate, they can hide out in groups in a dark place and then they all come scampering out….EEEEEEEEEE!!!

Edited to add — Okay so I hate being scared of something without knowing more about and so after I posted, I thought…am I freaked out by those bugs because they are so ugly or because of the pincers or what.  So I decided to do a quick wiki search about them. I know…I just entered the weirdo zone again.       The females are rather maternal.  They will keep their eggs and babies warm (how an insect does that…not sure), and they will also regurgitate food for their babies.  The scary pincers are used to hold bugs they have caught and to help with mating.  I haven’t read anything where they can hurt humans though. 

They are still ugly to me, and I have no desire to find a mother and all of her scary little babies.    But I do have a little bit more respect for them…..from afar.

[LittlePuffyTail]

Earwigs…nasty. We have a country-style mailbox on a post and we had dozens of ear wigs in there a couple of years ago. I’m very much anti-chemical but after failing to get rid of them using green methods I gave in and bought some bug poison spray to kill them. I dreaded getting the mail..it was disgusting.

[LizzieKnittyBun]

I just saw a Daddy Long Legs!!!

Coincidence?

I THINK NOT.

[Kate Monster]

So here’s an amusing bug story from my boyfriend. He HATES bugs, and now he’s living by himself so he doesn’t have me there to kill them. He saw a bug (according to him it was the size of a mouse or a rat! lol) with lots of icky legs crawling around the ceiling. So he takes one of those air cans for dusting and tries to blow it off the ceiling, but that doesn’t work so he tried to spray it with pledge, which doesn’t work any better, so he sprays it with a glade air freshener to the point that the floor is soaked and he slips and falls on his butt. Then he goes back to spraying it with glade until it finally falls off and he attempts to drown it in glade. When it finally isn’t crawling very fast, he picks it up with a such a huge wad of toilet paper that he when he flushes it, he clogs the toilet. When I asked him why he didn’t just knock it off the ceiling with a broom he just stared at me and said, ‘umm…’. lol. I’m worried that he might not survive living without me.

[LizzieKnittyBun]

I always use 409. Raid smells too awful…

Poor boyfriend, lol

[Kate Monster]

I can’t even imagine what the apartment must have smelled like after spraying that much air freshener!

[Dee]

Lol- you guys have just made my night- very amusing. BB, “the mother and all her scary little babies”- that struck me as very funny. And Kate Monster, I can can picture a guy doing something like your boyfriend did! The part about him slipping and falling on his butt was the best :p . Men think they’re so big and tough and smart, but they fall apart in a crisis. I’m ALWAYS the bug/spider killer and rodent/flying squirrel catcher in our house.

Okay everyone…. how about CENTIPEDES??? They are the most disgusting creature IMO- and they do bite! I read that they’re rather venemous too and can make a person sick from their bite- so imagine what could they do to a bunny . I’ve found a few in my house so far- one in my kitchen sink of all places, and one in my washing machine down in the cellar (they love cellars). It was hiding inside behind the basin and came crawling out to attack me when I reached in to pull out the clothes. Of course I immediately mashed it to bits, but ever since I’m terrified to reach into my washing machine. And when I’m loading/unloading laundry into it, I hope from one foot to the other just in case a centipede is coming near my feet. I must look like a friggin’ lunatic.
The most recent centipede incident was just a couple nights ago. It ws around 11 PM and for some weird reason, I was cleaning underneath the bunnies hay box. When I lifted it up, I saw something big and hideous scuttle underneath my utility shelf. I knew then that I could never rest until I found the thing- how could I go to sleep knowing that my babies were in mortal danger? I ran and screamed at Rick (poor hubby) to wake up- there was an emergency. Miraculously he got up and stood gaurd while I pulled everything out from under the shelf. I’m not much of a housekeeper, so it was quite a procedure. Rick kept saying how The Centipede had gone into the wall and I should just go to sleep, but I wasn’t having it. My efforts paid off though- finally I swept the broom along the wall out and out came The Centipede! I hit him so hard that I broke the unbreakable plastic broom in half. Oh well- it was worth it.

[Huckleberry]

OMG Kate, that is hilarious! Maybe you should buy him some bug spray for his birthday.

And earwigs scare the heck out of me too, not because I have ever seen one but because there is an episode of twilight zone where one lays eggs in a mans brain. I think it was planted on the guy as revenge by someone else.
As for the daddy long legs, I remember seeing those in the bathroom at the lake we would go to when I was a kid. There would be dozens of them perched up on the ceiling, tiny little bodies and legs so long that they were as big as the lightbulb they were circling.
Liz, I used to keep roly-polies as pets hahaha

[Author]

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