Spiders, encounters, and horrifying experiences

As of 15 minutes ago I had a deadly encounter with my worst enemy, Mr big, hairy, smooshable, FAST, spider, he met his fate with my hawiian shirt and a Harry potter book,

but it was horrifyingly scary to see it, just speeding across my bedroom floor like air hockey puck, first I thought I could defeat the monster with my Kleenex, oh my dear kleenex box, you forsaken me, he zoomed under and tried to make a go at me, then he met his fate with a harry potter book, number 4 and likely a very heavy book, He better be dead or else,

So please share if you've had any disturbing and horrifying experiences with the pesky unmentionable horrid fast running evil demons from satan himself, ;_;

Its 2 AM for popcicles sake, nooot good time for spider encounters.

For most people this may not sound like a big deal, but when something that small crawling towards you more faster then you could ever imagine, YOU COULDN"T DREAM of what their capable of doing, Getting up your pant leg and..lets not go into that, hehe,

There are at least 50,000 spider species in the arachnid family. Spiders are defined as having eight jointed legs, no wings, no antennae and only two body sections: the thorax and the abdomen. Spiders spend their entire life span capturing and eating other insects (about 2,000 in a year). Even though spiders do a great deal of good for our environment, spiders are greatly feared by most of the population. Most spiders are killed only because they scare people, not because they are actually dangerous to humans.

All spiders have some amount of venom with varying degrees of potency. The fangs of a spider are hollow. The venom is injected through the fangs into the victim (usually an insect). The venom will rapidly paralyze the victim and aid in digestion. Fortunately, most spiders are not dangerous to humans because their fangs are either too short or too fragile to penetrate human skin.

Spiders do not attack in herds. Spiders do not lay in wait and attack people. Spiders do not lift the covers at night and crawl into bed to bite people as they are sleeping. Some spiders can jump but they are not intentionally jumping at humans to attack them. A spider generally bites a human because it was scared and bites to defend itself. Spiders generally prefer to live in undisturbed areas such as corners of the house or the eaves or in the garden where they can catch insects in peace.

Killing spiders with pesticides is difficult. Spraying surfaces is usually ineffective because the spider has minimal contact with the sprayed area. The actual spider or egg sacs must be sprayed with pesticide. The danger of a possible spider bite has to be weighed against the risk of over-using pesticides that probably will not work against spiders.

Bite marks from most spiders are usually too small to easily be seen. Frequently the patient will not recall being bitten. Many of the spider bites will result in pain, small puncture wounds, redness, itching and swelling that lasts a couple of days. Spiders rarely bite more than once, so multiple bites are usually caused by insects such as fleas, bedbugs, ticks, mites and biting flies.

Spiders and roaches are some of the better insects around, we should be grateful that we dont have any highly venomous giant dog-sized insects around that prefer human flesh and reproduce every 3 minutes with egg sacks of 2000000 that reach breeding age about 2 minutes after the hatching

Pointing out a very valid point Cid,

My aplologies, just a crazy stressed out mom, hehe, Spiders do have their rights,
Just not in my household, and not so many of them,

Thank you very much Cid, and a very good night to you,

Ah thats what I like about Ireland...no big spiders...well the odd house spider, but we concider big about the size of a coin..they cant bite and have no hair..

You know they eat other spiders, espically the big harry ones . Just imagine how many they were eating to stay alive..... and what was probably still there after they finished the soda .

Hehe...okay....
This isn't a spider, but I doubt any less amusing.

When I was younger (elementary) I performed in a school band, well... The instructor has this bright idea to have the girls perfom as japanes dancers with our faces all painted. (Years later I learn that I was dressed up at age 7 as a geisha! gasp!) We were in the wings of the stage putting on out kimono, we were touring the schools of the district. As I'm putting on my kimono, I look to my shoulder and there is the biggest roach I had ever seen in my life (of course I've seen many bigger since..lol). I let out a silent shreak in terror, ripping that kimono off as fast as humanly possible and threw it...

It landed on a recorder player's head on stage while they were performing. haha

While generally I agree with Cid that most spiders are not dangerous, and that fear of them is a bit irrational, I do have a spider-attack story. It was an epic battle of man vs. beast, fought bravely and heroically by both sides. I'll recount the details as best I can recall.

Around the house I lived in during my late teen years, we had these quite large and very aggressive brown spiders. I'm not sure what species they were, but they were around 2 inches in length, and their most distinguishing characteristic was the tube-shaped webs they lived in. They would lie in wait at the far end of the tube, and whenever anything would wander close to the entrance they would leap out with lightning speed and bite. And when I say "anything" I mean ANYTHING. That includes bugs, twigs, fingers, anything. They didn't discriminate. If it was within their reach, it was theirs, kind of like those seagulls in Finding Nemo, "Mine! Mine! Mine! Mine!..."

Needless to say, we were all careful to avoid the numerous white web-tubes that polka-dotted the hedges around the house. It was not uncommon to find a spider or two on the sidewalk or on the driveway, but they never seemed to go into attack mode unless they were inside their tunnels. So in general, they were more of a curiosity than they were a nuisance or a threat.

One night however, all that changed when one of the creepy-crawlies found it's way into my bedroom. I was sitting on the edge of the bed with one bare foot on the floor when I noticed a bit of motion out of the corner of my eye. I looked over to see the creature stroll across the doorway and enter the room. Not a second later, it made a bee line straight for my big toe with truly frightening speed. I've never seen anything move that fast before or since.

Instinctively my leg sprung into action and launched my foot off the floor, up onto the bed, and not a moment too soon. The spider froze in place, maybe an inch or two from where my foot had previously been. The little hellspawn may have had supernatural, blinding speed on his side, but luckily the distance between the doorway and the bed was just far enough to cost him the prize. My big toe, into which he so obviously had wanted to sink his fangs, had made it safely out of his reach, at least for the moment.

I haven't mentioned yet that these guys can jump. Actually, vault would be a better word. I'd seen them spring off the sidwalk into the hedge enough times to know what was about to happen. Leaping the height of a mattress in a single bound would be nothing to this beast, and my foot was just barely over the edge, not to mention any other bits the little monster may have set his sights on. There was no possible way I could escape that kind of demonic speed twice. I gritted my teeth, and braced for impact.

Nothing happened. The little eight-legged freak remained frozen where he stood, his cold beady eyes fixed on me. Maybe he was suprised that my toe had been able to so successfully evade him the first time around, and he was recalculating his attack strategy. Maybe he was angry that his little prey item had been snatched away by a giant, and he was evaluting his options to get it back. Maybe he was just catching his breath inbetween charges. Who knows?

Each tick of the clock became an eternity as the two of us simply stared at eachother. Eventually it became obvious that neither of us was wanted to make the first move, and that all either of us could do was to wait for the other to make a mistake.

I began to weigh my options. If it came down to brute force, obviously I'd win. I'm 50 times this guy's size. I could cetainly take him. I had to rule out any kind of direct attack though because he was so insanely fast. The last thing I wanted was for him to run away and hide, and then come back later while I would be sleeping. If I were going to get out of this, really out of it, I would have to use my wits, and pray to the arachnid gods that spidey sense was just a myth.

Without breaking eye contact with the monster, I slowly and gently reached behind me and felt for the drinking glass I hoped beyond hope was still on the night stand. It had to be there; it just had to be. Where was it, dammit!

I found it. Ever so gingerly, I brought it onto the bed, still careful not to break eye contact and not to make any sudden moves.

Now for the risky part. If the beast wanted a toe for dinner, a toe he would have. I slowly extended my leg over the foot of the bed so that my big toe was as far from the spider as possible while still remaining clearly in his line of site, and then I wiggled it just a bit. He took the bate. He turned to fix his gaze on the moving toe, and it was all over. So hard and so fast was my assault that had the floor not been carpeted, the glass surely would have shattered into a thousand pieces, but -- thank god for slab rubber padding -- I was able to slam the glass down over him without breaking it, and he was trapped. SUCCESS! The day was mine!

I left him there for a while, unsure quite what to do with him. Eventually, I decided killing such a worthy adversary in a cage would be an injustice (not to mention a mess), and I decided to let him go. I slid a piece of cardboard under the glass, carried it outside, walked down the block, and then seperated the glass from the cardboard with a flicking motion, sending the spider flying a good 10 feet away, and I ran back inside. The battle was over.



By the way, if anyone knows what species of spider I might have been dealing with here, I'd love to find out. The only ones I know of that make tubular webs like that are the deadly Austrailian Funnel Webs, which thankfully look completely different from these guys. I wouldn't be suprised if they're in the same family though. The web shape, the size, and the aggression certainly fit.

I absolutely love the creative writing taking place in this thread. And as a side note, I think it was a Banana Spider...or, at least that's what they were called when I saw a spider on its web fitting your description.

Second guessing myself I looking it up and believe I stand corrected.

Trapdoor Spider seems you be your man. =) http://www.amonline.net.au/factsheets/trapdoor_spiders.htm

Thanks for the stab at species identification, Little. I've been poking around some entimology sites since my last post, and I think it is the Agressive House Spider, also known as the Funnel Weaver, or Hobo Spider . It is apparently a pretty nasty creature. Its bite can cause tissue necrosis, and can take up to 2 years to heal, so I guess I'm lucky I didn't get bitten. They are native to the Pacific Northwest, but the climate here in Buffalo is pretty similar, so I'd say it's a pretty good candidate.

The scariest spider I've run across is the Hawaiian Cane Spider. One showed up on the bathroom wall during my last trip to Hawaii. It was bigger than my hand. I'm told they're harmless to humans, but I don't believe everything I'm told...

If I find a spider in the house, I'll grab him/her with a tissue and drop them off outside. Once I did this with a bigger one, and one of his legs got loose and was pawing the air like a freaky alien claw. That freaked me out. Almost dropped him and ran!



BTW frosty, you're a good writer, IMHO.

If I find a spider in the house, I'll grab him/her with a tissue and drop them off outside. Once I did this with a bigger one, and one of his legs got loose and was pawing the air like a freaky alien claw. That freaked me out. Almost dropped him and ran!



Like an air hockey puck? That's a good one!
I like how you described your ordeal. You should be a writer!

Completely untrue!! The horrid truth Frostie is that you're very fortunate you were able to kill this eight legged death ninja! Evil incarnate!! It was obviously after you and if you had gone to bed without noticing it, the hellish thing would have surely crawled into your bed and laid it's eggs deep deep in your ear before scrambling onto your face and biting your eyes!!!

Kill them ALL!!! Death to SPIDERS!!!

Spiders are our friends! They eat bugs!

Here's a pic I snapped outside my house a year ago. It's a black and yellow garden spider - a very common variety you'll find in gardens and fields all over North America. They're harmless.

Right up until they crawl in your bed at night and lay eggs in your ear and then bite your eyes.

I was sitting at my computer one day and saw a small movement out of the corner of my left eye. I didn't look at what it was, and a few seconds later I felt a small tickle on my arm. I look down and there is a spider there, about half an inch long, that had dangled down from the ceiling onto me. I freaked out and shaked it off onto the carpet, then grabbed my dictionary and smashed it down on it, then stomped up and down on top of it for good measure.

I sat on my bed and stared at the dictionary laying there for a few minutes, then went over and picked it up. The spider was still alive, and almost unhurt. It scuttled away and I slammed the corner of the dictionary directly on top of it, then lay the book down on top of the corpse so I wouldn't have to touch it or look at it. Eventually I vacuumed it up and cleaned the area with soap.

What scares me even today is that if he had chosen a spot on the ceiling 6 inches to the right to dangle down from... he would have landed in my hair.

No no no... That's Aimee you're thinking of! Although I think she lays the eggs in your eyes and bites your ears. Or so I've been told.

fact of the day: Did you know that the average person swallows eight spiders in their sleep over their lifetime?

Now imagine how many crawl into your ear while asleep!

I grew up in Louisiana and we built a new house when I was a Freshman in HS. Our new house was lovely with a split level Family Room and had this really big brick fireplace on an exterior wall. This fireplace had a sitting level hearth that ran all the way to one side of the room and had a nice built in entertainment system above where our TV and other stuff was. Being kids, we always laid on the floor on pillows to watch TV and it was a wonderful room that we all enjoyed.

Well, that was all fine n dandy but on the end where the hearth met the wall there was this lil space. This space apparently was a lovely place for FRIGGIN HUGE BROWN SPIDERS to live n procreate. I don't know how many times as a kid I would fall asleap on the floor only to be woken up by a FRIGGIN HUGE BROWN SPIDER running at top speed across my bare chest. I would of course convulse n in a hissy fit flop all over the floor screaming while the spider went on his/her merry way.

To this day I am afraid of only 2 things. Spiders and roaches. I am not so much afraid of roaches as I think they are dirty lil vermin and don't wanna touch em. Spiders, I am deathly afraid of, irrational i know but deathly afraid just the same and I can thank that wonderful ole house n that hideous crack of death next to the wall where the FRIGGIN HUGE BROWN SPIDERS lived n breathed to torment me.

All I have to say bout spiders is EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I have heard that one before n just don't believe it... lol.

You kin have my share, Billy.

Gee, I don't know about swallowing spiders in my sleep ... hhehee