My youngest daughter is deathly afraid of spiders, any spiders, she seems to be able to see microscopic spiders and will scream like she is being burned alive. She doesn't react like that to anything else. I don't like spiders or other creepy-crawlies in the house just because but they don't freak me out.

BH I think the scorpion is cool!!!

Athynae - that wedding story s a good one. Makes me glad we don't have many snakes here.

As far as spiders go I don't exactly like them but I'm not fussed and happy enough to have them in the house. They eat flies and I like flies far less than spiders. The only creature I just won't have around is wasps, I hate the things, especially at the back end of the year when they will just sting for no reason. If there's a wasps nest anywhere near by I do for it as soon as I find it.

That scorpion does look rather cool BH, rather you than me for keeping it though.

I like that story too Olen, I have a few other snake stories in my repertoire but that is by far my fave. I like any creature that depletes the pest population. Spiders, snakes, lizards, frogs they are all welcome, as long as they live outside where they are supposed to be. I currently have a Garter snake that lives in the crawl space under my house and even though I have a large yard and it's next to some fields and a creek I do not have any rodents trying to "get in".

I don't like wasps or hornets either but they don't harass me. I was swarmed by a nest of paper hornets when I was about 6, almost did me in, eyes swelled shut, tubes in my nose so I could breath, etc but since then they don't come near me, hehe. Doctor told me they could "sense" the toxin and so they leave me alone. You would think after 40 + years it would have dissipated but they'll fly around me and then fly away.

Spiders don't bother me much, I have to agree with wasps though (and hornets now, ouch). Moths are the worst for me, it's not a fear, I just don't like them for some reason. It could be because I live in northern England so there is nothing here and a large moth is as scary as it gets

I should send Her Highness, my daughter Shelby, to Northern England then, lol.

I’ve only seen one large snake in our garden. A black snake stretched across the driveway with three lumps along it. They were too big to be baby birds, I’m guessing they were bunnies. I just left it alone, and it went slowly about its business. I was afraid we would hurt it if we picked it up while it was full.

We have black widows under the porch, some of them get quite big. The rule is that if the ball goes under the porch, it belongs to the spiders. The ones that give me an occasional surprise are the big garden spiders who put their enormous webs across the front walkway. I have had more than one pre-dawn dance with those.

One summer I had a little jumping spider living on my kitchen windowsill. I guess it got the gnats that came to the night light. He was my cute, friendly little spider buddy. I’m guessing it was a he, since I don’t have a million more jumping spiders in my kitchen.

The best spider encounter I’ve had in my garden was a mama wolf spider like this one with babies on her back.

What I’d like to see less of are the damned deer.

This post has been edited by Grits: Jul 21 2011, 01:29 PM

Spiders of almost all varieties creep me out to no end, the larger the fangs the more freaked out I will get. Snakes and such I think I would be okay with, however since England is largely snake free I can't really make much of a claim to those.

Moths however I love, they're actually really pretty when you manage to get a look at them, the dusky colours and the fur and the large fluffy antenae. Out of everything my cats manage to bring in the moths are my favourite. I still have yet to figure out how the cats manage to both catch them, and bring them in perfectly unharmed though.

Here’s what you need, KC:
Going to Grits' House Suit

ROFL!!!!!! Grits, poor KC, he and my daughter would get along I believe, until they encountered one of said demons that is.

Then it's every (wo)man for himself/herself?

Each of them trying to throw the other to the wolves, I mean spiders, lol. Of course KC would be seriously hampered due to the extremely loud and high pitched screams of the 12 year old female. First hand knowledge of said scream renders one physically incapable of anything beyond covering your ears and falling to the ground while you hope she either faints from fear or a sudden shortage of oxygen.

Grits the Younger is something of a future knight in shining armor, unless he sees a flying insect. That boy will trample toddlers and bowl over the elderly to get away from a bee. Or even more amusing, something that he thinks might be a bee. He doesn’t scream, thankfully. He just wordlessly bolts.

This post has been edited by Grits: Jul 21 2011, 10:23 PM

Dear god those are huge spiders!

The things up here are babies compared to those! Also, any chance of tempting your family to go to oblivi- I mean under your porch to take some pictures of the widows? just curious to see the size of them.

Oh hell no! There are spiders under there! The only spider I’m afraid of is the unseen spider. *shiver* Here’s as close as I’ll get:

There Be Spiders

Now crawl about fifteen feet and look up. They build their webs where the porch meets the house. The biggest black widow I’ve seen was about the size of my thumbnail plus legs, and it was under the siding. We had to pull some off and fix the flashing, hello spiders. They’re pretty shy, and their webs are a mess. I checked the other spot I’ve seen them, inside the ash chute that comes from under the fireplace. Now there are just little brown spiders in there.

The garden spiders are much bigger. They hang in the middle of their webs, many feet away from visible support. The web strands are incredibly strong. So when you walk through them, the spider is right in your face. The strands wrap around the more you twirl in a blind panic attempt to remove yourself, and they don’t easily break. During which interval the spider (who has a discernable weight on you) is also trying to escape. Ah, better than caffeine for an early wakeup. Thankfully the spiders are harmless, unless you’re a cicada, butterfly, or small bird.

I. hate. spiders.

This post has been edited by King Coin: Jul 21 2011, 11:32 PM

KC, don't read this.

Here’s a story about Mr. Grits and the Garden Spider. The garage at Grits Manor is used for exercise, so we park in the driveway. This leaves the cars vulnerable to disrespect from the birds and infiltration by invertebrates when Mr. Grits leaves the window cracked. So one fine day in the fall when the spiders have reached their maximum diameter, the Grits family piles into the Mr. Grits Wagon. Everyone buckles up, preflight checklist complete, when I turn the find the driver’s door hanging open and Mr. Grits mysteriously gone. I glance around and spot him standing in the driveway behind the car. WTF? I make a few gestures, but he just stands there. One of the kids in the back seat says, “Spider!” So I start looking in the back seat, turning around and completely cracking my neck by the way. No, the spider is in the front, they say.

Oh, in the front seat. With me. I turn around and immediately spot (because it is HUGE) a garden spider gently descending from the rear view mirror. I think, if I don’t catch this thing Mr. Grits is going to need a new car, because I’m sure not letting him drive the (spider free) Grits Wagon and he’ll never get back in here. The kids start a chorus of “Save the spider.”

So I scramble out to find some branch and leaf combination lying around that will be big enough to support the weight of this thing while I move it, calling to the kids still buckled in the back seat, “Watch where it goes.” Grits the Youngest, a curly-haired, dimpled, female child of about eight years at the time, bails out of the car. She has a cup in her little hands, harvested from the debris on the back seat floor. (Mr. Grits’ car, what can I say.) She scoops up the spider and relocates it to the bushes, leaving the cup there for good measure, cooing at it the whole time in a soothing manner. Then she goes to comfort her dad, six feet of muscle and manliness standing at a safe distance.

Now I realize where my son’s silent flight comes from. It would be bad strategy to alert your companions when you’re fleeing danger. He doesn’t have to outrun the bee, he just has to outrun his mom.

I'm with KC on this. Just reading this page gave my legs that strange feeling that only happens when I'm beyond terrified.



I should seriously buy that for when I need to go into the shed

I kept getting chills racing up my spine as if there was something on my back. GAH.
I DIDN'T.

Good god, can you believe that compassion that happened in Norway? Makes me sick to my stomach, that.

Always said fascism is a crime and not an opinion.