Arachnophobes beware! Apparently there are going to be a lot of our 8 legged friends around this autumn (well, in the UK at least)!
Conservationists say there could be more spiders and daddy longlegs than usual this autumn because of favourable breeding conditions. Researchers at insect charity, Buglife, said last year's wet autumn meant the larvae of daddy longlegs had plenty of decaying plant matter to eat. Experts also said this year's temperate summer had been good for spiders.
See http://tr.im/zGYV and http://tr.im/zGZc if you dare! (Both links point to BBC News)
Comments
Spider dance
Yesterday, my wife was walking towards the house after coming home from work. She walked right into a spider web. She did the best spider dance I've ever seen! Running in place and waving her arms around! I don't think I've ever laughed so hard, I wish I'd filmed it!
She didn't think it was so funny at first, but after I demonstrated what her dance looked like, she laughed too!
Mr. Ram
Insect charity?
Talk about misapplied efforts! ;-)
They know they can survive
Donations
Plenty of spiders here they can have
I live in the Mid-West USA
And I have noticed a real increase in the size, and numbers, of the spiders we normally see on a day to day basis around here. We have also seen some that are not common to our general info. The ones outside, and the ones that love to come inside if they can. Not just here, which was a farm field just a few years ago, on the edge of a small town outside Indy, but at work also.
And what about mummy longlegs?
Besides I think you will be so inundated with newly bred dectorist* that you won't notice the small crawlies for a while.
*this word was in the NYT today but in a quote from a British archeologist. It's not in many dictionaries but is in lots of Google finds. Neologism-phobes beware too.
Spiders are great
I used to be afraid of spiders until I found out that they eat a lot of the bad bugs. I always say "Hello" to them now.
Well, I never claimed to be sane, did I?
Susie
Garfield is right
Today's Garfield comic strip pretty much sums up my feelings about spiders. Given the increase in fiddlebacks over the last several years, I'm not concerning myself with proper identification before reacting.
I went outside once. The graphics weren' that great.
No Spiders for me!
When I was in Kindergarten, I was almost killed by a Canadian Brown Recluse. Missed half the year from it.
Nope... don't do spiders... If they are in my house, they have a death sentence.
If they have the audacity to put a web near my doors... they are doomed.
I will suffer them to live in the trees and bushes though, though I much prefer it when I can't see them.
Hugs,
Kristy
GOD NO GOD NO GOD NO GOD
GOD NO GOD NO GOD NO GOD NO!!!!! I hate them, hate hate hate spiders. I want them all to die of they are within 100 feet of me. I really do NOT like spiders, so they WILL die if they are in my house, my yard, near me, and God forbid, on me. And Stacy, if you read this don't even think about it. That goes for the rest of you who know me IRL.
Thank God I do not live in Oz.
Life would suck if it weren't so entertaining sometimes.
Life would suck if it weren't so entertaining sometimes.
Hah
Pet Huntsman, big brown fuzzy things often called tarantulas though they's skinnier and harmless. I do always try to catch them in a container and lob them out the door. Bad Garden Karma to kill spiders ya know. Must admit I'm not keen on them crawling on me, a weird slightly icky scary feeling even when you know there's no problem. Had one walk across my windscreen once... on the inside... got my heart beating a little, fortunately I wasn't driving at the time and managed to shoo him out the door. Spring here so there'll be more about soon, had a baby last night about 2 inches, shooed him out the sliding door. Now Funnel webs...
Oh, by the way one of the Connelly's(crime writers - the 'darker' one) did a story with a guy killed in his car by spiders and they featured some more throughout. Seriously creepy icky, first time I'd ever heard of Recluse spiders. So Oz don't have a monopoly on crawlies, nasty or otherwise. We do have some good ones though.
Kristina
Reminds me...
...of a lyric from "The Jungle Garden" song from "Yanomamo!"
# In the gloom of the forest floor, eager for his tea,
# Lurks the largest living spider, Theraphosa blondi!
# He's massive in size, and covered in hairs, and he hunts in the dead of night,
# And always attacks whatever he sees with all his 10 inch might!
Fancy meeting it? He's a nice little photo (of a mere 6 incher), courtesy of Wikipedia...
There, that wasn't so bad, was it?! >:)
--Ben
As the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, then only left-handers are in their right mind!
No it wasn't.
In fact, it does not impact as it should.
For better effect, you would have to take the picture of a spider and digitally add it to an appropriately scaled human face. Now THAT will be a blast!
Faraway
Faraway
Big Closet Top Shelf
Where you can fool around like you want to and most you get is some bemused good ribbing!
Bah! Spiders
don't bother me. I'll say "hi" to them if I see them, and if there is one that's causing a problem I'll usually just pick it up and take it outside or to another location where it doesn't bother anything.
Now, roaches and waterbugs, those are an entire different story. Because the last year and a half or so has been so mild then really hot, along with all the rain and such, it seems that not only have they been especially bad this year, but exceptionally huge as well. Most people would probably find it hilarious to see two grown women screaming and jumping around because they spotted a cockroach skittering across the floor, but my roommate and I don't find it funny at all. Eugh, I HATE roaches and waterbugs...
Melanie E.
We Wouldn't Be Here
If it wasn't for spiders. We would be submerged in insects, so the poor things are much maligned.
Having said that there are some SERIOUS creepy-crawly spiders. You haven't lived until you've seen a bird-eating spider in Papua New Guinea. I kid you not; they can be 8 inches (200mm) across and really (shudder) hairy, and their webs are like ropes. They could kick Garfield's arse,
Joanne
creepy crawly
SPIDERS IN MY HOUSE, I carefully scoop up if I can, and toss them outside. Luckily I've never had to do this in the winter, because I don't see many then. I started doing this after reading CHAROLETTE'S WEB as a child...
SPIDERS IN MY YARD, I leave alone except to maybe watch them spin their webs in fascination, admiration; and I also like wolf spiders, which don't spin webs but are such clever little hunters
SPIDERS UNDER THE HOUSE, with their glossy black pendulous abdomens and little hourglass warning signs, I do my best to avoid, and to dress heavily when I go under there, (taking pretty much the same precautions you do when working around bees) and when I emerge dance around the yard shaking off the imaginary black widows I feel all over me.
THE SPIDERS FROM MARS have been on my turntable/cassette player/CD player and now my computer music file probably once a week for more years than I'd care to admit...
~~~hugs, Laika
What borders on pure insanity?
Canada and Mexico.
.
Fear
My late sister worked as an EMT for the local Ambulance Squad. She was virtually fearless, tackling a lot of the difficult cases; roadside accidents, heart attacks, blood and gore beyond any horror film. Her colleague told me she entered a house to answer a call from dispatch. He was just walking in the front door when he heard her scream. Fearing the worst (they'd dealt with suicides and gunshots and the like) he rushed into the room to find her standing against the wall pointing across the room. He expected something gruesome, only to find that she was pointing past the patient to the far wall, where a spider about the size of a quarter was inching down a strand of web. I miss her!
"She was born for all the wrong reasons but grew up for all the right ones." Che Dio ti benedica! 'drea
Love, Andrea Lena
Most house spiders do you a
Most house spiders do you a crucial service as natural bug control, minimizing your chances of getting dengue or malaria. I hate people who kill spiders out of ignorance or malice. Indoor spiders don't do well outdoors so if you want to relocate them just choose a secluded spot indoors.
Spiders, road kill
One memory from my youth was a vacation out west, we were in Oklahoma and the roads were covered in large, 4 to 6 inch spiders that my dad said were tarantulas. Miles and miles of covered roads, and we drove through and over them.
Squish!
Oooh.
Was it a complete covering or just some ragged one?
Faraway
Faraway
Big Closet Top Shelf
Where you can fool around like you want to and most you get is some bemused good ribbing!
Squish - the sequel
Pretty much complete, no aim required. I don't know if that was a yearly thing or like the cicada, once in several years but it was like a carpet on the road with holes in the carpet.
I've seen that, just not with spiders
In 1958, Brawley, California had an invasion of tomato worms, caterpillars. They covered everything, roads, lawns, houses, slow-moving old people. Three other times Brawley got cricketized. It was not safe to drive because of cars hydroplaning on crickets. I saw that once more in a small town in Texas, Van Buren, I think it was. And in another Texas town, I saw it again, only with the big, brown West Texas cockroaches that make one think of stogies looking for bums to smoke.
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
Oklahoma playmates of the 8 legged kind.
The tarantulas you were seeing in Oklahoma were likely looking for mates. They are usually solitary and territorial living in cracks in rock formations or in burrows in soft dirt, and to reproduce they have to go walk about. They are venomous, but their bite is no worse than a wasp sting to people, and they are far less likely to bother a person than is a wasp. The venom of a tarantula is less potent for people than that of a Fiddle Back spider, or black widow spider and they are far less aggressive. I have moved tarantulas that were in the way of my archeological explorations by just putting my hand down in front of them and letting them walk on, then move them and let them walk off. They don't even lift their fighting fangs when you are just gentle with them. We have two colors of these hairy spiders, a pretty reddish brown in the eastern part of the state, and black in the western part of the state. Their prey is usually insects, but I did see a fight between with a tiny shrew that was kinda a draw in result. The tarantula got a meal, but lost a leg in the process. Ounce for ounce, those little shrews are vicious!!! Be glad they are not larger or we could really be in trouble.
CaroL
CaroL
a rilly big shrew
And how right you are about shrews, CaroL! Here's an entire movie you can watch for free about what happens when shrews grow larger (They look suspiciously like dogs dressed in fur outfits, but they're shrews I guess...). Enjoy, anyone who has an hour and 8 minutes in which to learn about the awful menace of these KILLER SHREWS. (and here I'd been wasting my time worrying about killer bees...)
http://www.archive.org/details/The_Killer_Shrews
~~~hugs, Laika
(Emanuel Swedenborg said somewhere that insects and other noxious crawly things are the thoughts of evil men made manifest in the world. Or something like that. Interesting theory. I went looking for the exact quote but couldn't find...)
What borders on pure insanity?
Canada and Mexico.
.
Big Shrew? Ah, that was..
... Kathryn Grayson, though for some reason I kept thinking Maureen O'Harra. Great fun and much nicer than them crawly things. Shrew's is cuter even if she was a Kate. Okay I'm mixing my somethings here.
If you want crawlies there's that one in Africa about the ants.... nasty.
Kristina
Pet Spiders
Here in Tempe, where it was supposed to be 106° F today, we have pet spiders in our house. They have very long skinny legs like daddy long legs, but they are true spiders with a head and abdomen. They spin an untidy web and mainly eat fruit flies, gnats and a few mosquitoes. They're pretty small bodied and in the mature ones the legs are about an inch long. We might have 3 big ones and 2 to 6 small to medium at any one time. Their webs are not very efficient at catching the small insects they eat, so just a few get big and survive.
We usually have a few black widows outside. They seem to come and go; we leave them alone.
We seem to get a few roaches per week from the sewer system. We're sure they don't breed in the house. Kim always thinks roaches are trying to attack her and she's afraid to fight back. We have a system in place. If she sees one she yells "roach" and I drop everything and run to her and try to kill the roach. Sometimes they escape. We put down boric acid, but we won't use real poisons.
Hugs,
Renee
Hugs and Bright Blessings,
Renee