Fuck, There's a Spider In My Room...

[surreal]

Nope, quite the opposite :-)

So you are the perfect cure for arachnophobia, eh?  Nice one....

[surreal]

heh - right on cue:

Doctor Finds Spiders Living In Boy's Ear

Updated: 09:02, Monday May 07, 2007
When a young boy went to see his doctor complaining of constantly hearing a faint popping noise he did not expect to be told he had spiders living in his ear.
It was not long before the sound in the nine-year-old's head started to become earache, so his mother took him to a GP.

Diane Courtney told the doctor in their home town of Albany, Oregon, that her son was hearing noises like "like Rice Krispies".   And after a short examination, Jesse Courtney literally could not believe his ears when the doc told him that a pair of eight-legged creepy crawlies had set up home in his head.

"They were walking on my eardrums," Jesse said, explaining the popping noise.

When Dr David Irvine flushed out the boy's left ear canal, the first spider came out dead.  But the other little blighter needed a second dousing before it came out - still alive.

Jesse was given the spiders - now both dead - as a souvenir and has taken them to school to show his pals.

http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30000-1264408,00.html

[Lady Beaner]

Fuck, that just gave me a massive shiver!

[buttgammon]

I tried not to read that, but I scanned some of the last paragraph accidentally and I'm now deeply concerned about my itchy ear. I always attributed it to having lots of wax, but I'm not so sure now.

[surreal]

I tried not to read that, but I scanned some of the last paragraph accidentally and I'm now deeply concerned about my itchy ear. I always attributed it to having lots of wax, but I'm not so sure now.

hehe, sorry buttgammon....

kind of reminded me of this:




God I miss the PLIF site....

[buttgammon]

I'm quite glad that's just showing a white box whatever it is!

[surreal]

I'm quite glad that's just showing a white box whatever it is!

really?  Shows up ok on mine - its a comic strip, .gif image, nothing scary....

[buttgammon]

Could it be down to me viewing the board in letssplit, then? If it's OK for you I don't see why I can't view it.

[bill hicks]

Rather than start the 800th thread on this subject I thought I'd search for the latest one...

Is anyone else noticing the amount of bastard massive spiders around at the moment? I've had 11 this week in my room, three of them today alone. I am moved to write this since I was just moments ago watching The Wire laying on my bedroom floor and felt the tell tale tickle on my leg. By the time I felt back there it was already moving upwards and I ended up fishing it out of my crevice. This one was 9.5cm. I've takent to measuring them now...I would take a picture but 1) I haven't got a camera, and 2) people always complain about that sort of thing on the internet because they are girls blouses. And thinking about it 3) I may be pathetic enough to measure spiders now, but have yet to sink to the depths of photographing them for my own amusement...

Anyway...is this currently common or am I just attracting them. We did have a monstrous one recently (11cm) which lived above our kitchen window. We had a lot of flies in the summer and decided to keep it as a detterent. We named it Dave (even though it was a girl, in fact because it was a girl and we thought it was funny), and it proved utterly useless at catching flies. In the end we toasted Dave with glasses of Lilt and sent her on her way out of the front door.

Maybe she gave birth to loads of them in a cupboard or something...I have forgotten when baby spiders turn up...or maybe if we still had Dave she would be protecting us from the invasion.

(12. Crawled over my foot while typing 'protecting' above. 7cm, dropped off by the kerb outside. I also got honked and wolf whistled by passing female motorist as I was in the middle of the road in my pants.)

[rudi]

[tag] Grow up - it's just a fucking spider [/tag]

[actwithoutwords]

Just had a monster scuttle into the middle of our sitting room. The cheeky prick. My new house is absolutely riddled with insects of various kinds. Hate them, I fucking hate them.

[GratefulApe]

I'm curious - how did you know Dave was a girl?

There's loads of small spiders in my house, tucked away in high corners and under window sills. They keep descending on us when we're watching telly. I won't jinx it anymore.

I might start a Fuck, There's a Dog Near Me thread, especially after watching tonight's hysterical-chilling-sensational-ghastly Panorama on illegal killer fighting dogs.

[Viero_Berlotti]

Now Rats, don't get me started on rats. *shudder*

Yeah, Neil can tell you all about Rats.

[bill hicks]

There are intricacies involved, but basically if you have a house spider, and it's massive it's a female. Male ones are much small and don't live long. Once they have mated the male is eaten by the female.

Good to know it's not just me though. My neighbour is shit scared of them, like proper girly arachnophobia scared of them, and being that I fucking despise the cunt I may start putting them through his permanently open window. Fucker plays Maroon motherfucking 5 again I'll start breeding the bastards year round.

Having actually read the thread now I can attest that we caught a False Widow at work the other week. By the bins near some of the wooden pallets. They are really pretty small and you can clock them straight away since they're shiny and don't look like much else you'd find in your garden.

What you really want to be worried about are Tube Web Spiders...like the False Widow it came over from the southern Mediterranean countries...except this one looks like a proper fuck off spider. Long fat body with a bulbous arse end.

http://www.nhm.ac.uk/nature-online/life/insects-spiders/spiderbites/tube-web-spider-segestria-florentina.html

This is it's page at the Natural History Museum. A friend of mine got bitten by one of them and he was in some distress, said it was like being stabbed and having his hand pumped with deep heat. If you live near Portsmouth you get a load of them around. Steer clear of them they're nasty little fuckers.

[rudi]

Just "near" or does "in" count...?

[GratefulApe]

I think I've seen those tube spiders around and killed a fair few. That photo makes them huge of course, but they're not that big.

I think it's the European house spider  (the wiki page has a ghastly picture of one) that grows to enormity - I mean almost 'fuck off and call the police' size. Fuck it, we're lucky - we don't have the daily worry of finding a lethal bastard behind the toilet or getting assaulted (it's the only word for it) by the wandering spider. Unless you run a greengroacer's.

[Cack Hen]

Urghhh, it's that time of year again isn't it.

I did hear recently that spiders come in just after summer because of the change in temperature or something, but seeing as it hasn't really been hot anyway, and seeing as it's getting hotter now, maybe I won't see any...? Wishful thinking.

[El Unicornio, mang]

Check this web out

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070830/ap_on_re_us/odd_giant_spider_web

[alan nagsworth]

Sweet mother of god. I'll give SOTS a fiver to run about underneath that for 30 seconds.

[SetToStun]

They're co-operating now?! Oh dear Lord - we're about to lose our dominant position.

[Munday's Chylde]

No word of a lie, gods honour - I was literally reading this thread on my laptop in bed ten minutes ago, I then went searching for nightmare stories of people swallowing them in their sleep - unlikely apparently... and a big bastard house spider ran right over the bed sheet over my chest. It almost seems like God having a laugh with me that does - I mean I'd just that second been reading about the odds against a spider being near your head when your sleeping. Staggering.

Anyway its dead now.

Are conkers in season yet?

[Huzzie]

And who the fuck are you?!

[Munday's Chylde]

I'm just Mundays is all.

[bomb_dog]

It IS a conspiracy, and they ARE all in it together.

I used the bathroom last night and there must have been about a dozen money-spider size tiny buggers all setting up a cluster of webs together above the door. A few others were crawling up the wall towards them. Soon got rid.

I guess a batch of eggs had recently just hatched from the one that lives around the back of the toilet bowl that runs away whenever I get too near it...

[23 Daves]

I hate to tell all the resident arachnophobes this, but the oft-quoted fact that there are no spiders in Britain that can bite humans is false.  There's a woodlouse and beetle eating spider called Dysdera Crocata with very sharp teeth (it needs them to crunch through their shells) which will quite happily stab human flesh if it gets angry.  Bill Oddie even made the foul mistake of declaring on a TV programme that they "had sharp teeth but couldn't bite humans" only for one of them to prove him wrong by biting him on the hand, causing a lot of blood to trickle out of a yelping Oddie's hand.  How I laughed.  I was yelling at the television trying to warn him and desperately correcting his poor research, but he wouldn't listen.  Really, the spider biting him did prevent the need for me having to write into the BBC with a correction, so it all worked out quite well.  I just hope he didn't vomit in the night - a friend's father got bitten by one of them whilst gardening and later on that day had breathing difficulties.

Spider worriers, fear not - Dysderas generally only live in cool damp places where woodlice are likely to be found, so you're more likely to find them under stones and rocks than in your bedroom.

On the subject of the woodlouse (which we were, twice) they're actually more closely related to sea shrimps than insects.  They breathe through gills.  So really, if you think of it as being a sort of land-prawn that's crawling all over your bed, it's probably more comforting.  I had an outback-loving Australian friend who ate one of them once, and said it was actually rather prawny in taste too.

[Huzzie]

I'm just Mundays is all.

Never heard of you.


Onnnly joking.
Good to see you back.

[Huzzie]

I've just done a search for that Woodlouse spider, expecting a tiny little thing but it's massive!! and really freakishly ugly!



I hope there aren't many up here.

Actually, it seems to be only about an inch long.

EDIT: Ohhh I don't like this! "Merseyside is being hit by a spate of spider attacks.  This six-eyed spider normally eats woodlouse but now has a taste for human flesh.  Experts say the pain from its double-pricked sting can last for 24 hours.

Paul Rowley, of Liverpool's School of Tropical Medicine, said: "There have been a number of cases of spiders biting people in Merseyside."  The attacks have centered on Liverpool and the Wirral, reports The Guardian.

The spider, dysdera crocata, normally lives under stones or in rotting wood, but they sometimes venture into homes - especially those with damp problems."

[23 Daves]

Actually, it seems to be only about an inch long.

That photo has been blown up a lot, I think.  When I was a kid my parents had a coal bunker in the back garden dismantled, and a few Dysderas ran out in a panic - they're actually quite small.  We used to get quite a few in our back yard, but I only really spotted them because as a child I had a tendency to lift up stones and pieces of wood looking for insects.  I've never been bitten by one, incidentally.

EDIT: Ohhh I don't like this! "Merseyside is being hit by a spate of spider attacks.  This six-eyed spider normally eats woodlouse but now has a taste for human flesh.  Experts say the pain from its double-pricked sting can last for 24 hours.

Paul Rowley, of Liverpool's School of Tropical Medicine, said: "There have been a number of cases of spiders biting people in Merseyside."  The attacks have centered on Liverpool and the Wirral, reports The Guardian.

Well, this isn't impossible, I suppose, but it sounds unlikely to me.  They're not interested in 'human flesh'.  They'll only bite if you annoy them by picking them up or prodding them (as Bill Oddie discovered).  The Guardian?  This reads like The Daily Mail.

The spider, dysdera crocata, normally lives under stones or in rotting wood, but they sometimes venture into homes - especially those with damp problems."

Yep, but I'd say there's a heavy emphasis on "sometimes" here.  I've lived in tons of places with damp problems and woodlice (my present flat, for example) and can honestly say that I have never, ever seen a Dysdera anywhere indoors.  I suppose if they realise there's a huge old shrimp-snack to be had they might pop their heads in to say hello, but it's something I've yet to witness.  I suppose if you don't turn the heating on and live in a really damp shithole, you might get some.

On the subject of spiders being bigger this year, there's been a huge mosquito explosion due to the damp weather, so they might just be eating a lot more healthily.  A lot of Walthamstow was built on old marshland which means tons of midges and mosquitos, and also tons of big old fat spiders every year.  The ones around here have realised that if they build their webs around lights and windows they'll get the nocturnal insects flying into the false moons as well.  Cunning.

[Small Man Big Horse]

Just before going to bed last night I spotted a fairly big fuck off spider in the corner of the room, and thought I'd better murder it if I was going to get a good night's sleep. But as soon as I got near it, it scuttled off faster than any spider I've ever seen. After a bit I gave up looking for it and went to bed, and annoyingly about half an hour later felt something on my thigh...I presumed I was just imagining things, but gave my thing a big slap, only to then be aware that I'd squished the bastard all over my leg. You can imagine how happy I was about that in my half drunken stoned state. Still, it washed off pretty easily this morning, that's the main thing I guess.

[Huzzie]

You gave your "thing" a big slap? I bet you enjoyed that.