The spring spider season has started in my house. Their favoured hang-out is my bath. I have recently removed two to prevent them from drowning. One was able to escape onto the windowsill; the other made a run for it across the floor, but alas, the cats did to it what cats do to small defenceless creatures.The fact I can remove spiders is a big breakthrough; it wasn’t always the case. Now, I can put a glass over them, slide a leaflet that’s fallen out of a magazine (see, they do have a purpose) under them, and set them free. I am able to mock those afflicted with arachnophobia.
I was once a sufferer myself. As a child, I was petrified of spiders, although curiously, I was a big fan of Itsy and Bitsy on TV. Over the years, I was able to convince myself that it was natural and right to fear spiders – it was a ‘primitive memory’ of when the creepy little fellas could really do you harm. When I moved to Cambridgeshire in the hot summer of 1995, the spiders were immense. They had, as my news editor at the time said, knees and ankles.
Gradually, though, I acclimatised myself to spiders outside. My theory was that I had plenty of space to run away from them. In the last few years, I have reached the stage where I have desensitised myself to them inside too.
However, I curse people who put big pictures of spiders in newspapers and magazines to make me jump when I turn the page, and I still occasionally awake with a start in the early hours convinced there is a spider on my pillow. I can’t do foreign, furry spiders either, but I reckon I have the domestic fellas sussed …
25 comments:
Not keen on them myself either. It's the way they move- they look right at you but sidle off sideways alarmingly. I don't like crabs on the beach for the same reason.
desperately trying not to make very poor taste comment about Gill's 'crabs on the beach' aversion, will be back later when I have composed myself. Hope you are well M&M. my lack of recent comments should be taken as a poor reflection on my own capacity for sensible thought lately and certainly not on your own my dear. Also, you have reminded me sadly of the bad news that spiderman has got a new girlfriend in the latest film and I am still recovering from this.
eminem - a few years ago I noticed in a charity catalogue to help remove spiders. It was a long, transparent plastic tube, with a 'pump' at the end to suck up the spider from the bath, or wherever, so that they could be safely removed. Far more expensive than a cup.
And they did arrive on the scene about the same time as Viagra, so maybe some of those 'pump' makers were just looking to diversify...
Hardly bears thinking about..
[insert own 'I don't like spiders or snakes' joke here]
I am the chief spider shooer outer here, answering to screams and then letting them run up my arm wondering what all the fuss is about.
I remember reading somewhere that we all swallow about six in our lifetime as a result of them crawling into open mouths during sleep. I know you really wanted to know about that.
grocer - yeeuch..I really wanted to know that ! sounds like an urban [country?] myth to me..
Gosh, I wonder what Susan Stranks is doing now ? Mind you, I think I'm mixing her up in my mind with Jenny Hanley [Handley ?] who I believe was on 'Magpie' for a while.
Anyway, never mind 'Boris the Spider' what about 'Boris the Jackal' !
http://images.scotsman.com/2006/01/28/en2801borb.jpg?maxWidth=500
crabs on the beach are much better than crabs in pubes arthur
spiders - ugh. Especially bath spiders - what is with them that they have to end up in the bath, and don't give me that overflow or through the plug hole cr*p - I keep the plug in and the overflow blocked and they still manage to get in there but not out!
It's one of the only good reasons for keeping a man about the place - spider removal.
My daughter is eighteen but there is still a particular yell that she uses that means I must hurry up the stairs to remove a spider from her bedroom or the bathroom. She is genuinely petrified of them - especially those slightly hairy wolf spiders. She watches intently while I tip them out of windows. I never kill them of course. She wants to make sure I am not kidding her and that the spider is truly gone.
I can second anonymous of 11.25...I'm one of those saddos that actually reads the leaflets that fall out of magazines, and in doing so discovered that Lakeland Limited do a battery-powered, sucking tube thing. You suck up the spider and lovingly place it oustide! How cool is that?!
My husband was overwhelmed when he discovered that device in his stocking.
Can spiders set off house alarms? I'm sure an arachnid was responsible for that happening to me once...
Pig: How can you be sucked up and then put 'lovingly' outside. Poor thing. Imagine having a 5 foot diameter dyson put over your head and swithced on!!
However, it's better than being whaked over the head by a five foot copy on The Times! :-)
pig - "My husband was overwhelmed when he discovered that device in his stocking."
What can I say - are you sure he realised that's what it was ;-]
Gill, they don't just look at your with a pair of eyes either - I believe they have lots!
Arthur and Pig, welcome back. Good to see you.
Anon, you realise your mention o Viagra will attract undesirables to my blog? According to the sitemeter thing, the 'cock' jokes were pulling in people from porn sites and people doing google searches for 'fab cock'. The mind boggles!!
Brom, has one bitteny ou yet?? Brave or mad - I'm not sure ...
Grocer, apparently they crawl into your ear and eat their way through to your barin as well. At least they did in a Pan horror anthology I read at a formative age ...
Ziggi, I wonder what a bath looks like to a spider - the Grand Canyon? They are very clever though- the way you can wash them down the plughole but they trap the air around them, so they can climb up again a la Incy Wincy Spider...
YP, the problem with spiders thathave not been removed is that they hide until the light goes off and then plot to lower themselves onto your pillow while you sleep ...
anon - sorry, poppet, but as one so non-technically minded i cannot work out how to get a 'profile' thingy, any reference to 'sitemeter' is over my head by a few inches. however i shall desist from mentioning that word. however i feel I have to mention that if went to far down this road we wouldn't be allowed to drop the word 'socialist' into the chat since that contains the name of a proprietary medication of a sexual nature.
And don't get me onto to how that Scunthorpe United are doing these days in the footy..
Yikes - you are right ! Your 'mileometer' thingy is nearly at 4,000 ! Shall we all drive [post?] very slowly so we can watch it turn over together ? [No, you'll crash the car..Ed]
I have a few spiders in the house that I'm cool with. Being in Australia you have to. You grow up to learn the difference between whats most dangerous and whats not (suprising the more smaller and darker the spider is the more death it should recieve!). The thing that worries me most is snakes.
Anon, 'postwatch' refused to go through a spam filter once ...
Orhan, I fear Australian spiders deeply
This is the sort of post which keeps me blogging - I adore reading this sort of thing.
Spiders - yeuch! David gives them pet names. We've had Roger on the wall in the living room for a few days and we had a Hermione (don't ask me why he decided this spider was female) in the boxroom for about a week. I refused to go in there as was convinced she was weaving webs willynilly. Roger has disappeared now (probably holidaying in the kitchen)but no doubt the little beast will return.
twenty posts and still yet not a mention that the 'female of the species is deadlier than the male'..?
Which is quite true anonymous as the lady often eats the man after she's shagged him to nourish herself and he's done his job.
I don't like spiders much but fortunately haven't seen many lately. It's big fat bodied ones with long legs that I don't like, especially if they're hairy.
We had one called Anansi that used to appear from under a sofa at my mum and dad's house. It did the same thing every year in about October but it can't have been the same one (or could it?....) as spiders don't have that long a lifespan. It would run out, scare the shit out of anyone sitting on the floor, run up a wall and do a complete lap of the living room and then return under a sofa. It was a big mofo of a spider as well.
Karen, that first paragraph contained sufficient relish that I fear for your young man.
eminem - now that you are getting more posts than 'wifey' it is only a matter of time before you get a book deal. or at least a delivery of joules clothing to your 'stables'..
Oh, and anon of the synchronicity, I was not thinking of a soon to be deceased Russian ex-president when I entitled this post! I was thinking of a song by The Who ...
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