Spider in the hole!

[Bally002]

Summer is here.  But this summer where I live it is very humid, raining/storms most evenings and very wet.  House, particularly in the toilet and laundry is very damp.  Underground water coming up.

So the creepy crawlies are coming indoors.  I have sprayed. (Bug spray you retrobates).

"Story now  bally."  - Okay, when I go to put on my shoes or crocs this time of year, I turn them upside down and tap them hard.  Gets rid of any nasties that might be inside.  I have scored on several occasions with spiders, bitey ants, centipeids and even a wasp. (Shit!).

This morning I gets up.  My crocs are under xmas tree near where we sleep in this warmer weather.  I look at them.  Thinking..tap them...Yeah, nah and puts them on to go heat the kettle up.   Bang.  Some thing biting and crawling on my right foot.  Crikey!!!  Kicks them off and out comes this spider.  Not big but ain't a juvenile.  Lucky for me it was a harmless type (Not fatal) but still got me.  "Fuck, fuck, fuck, shit, bum poo weeeee!!!" Hopping around.

Spider makes a break under the pool table.  Dogs do a runner as I'm yelling.  Foot is stinging.  I wash it.  Bit of blood, not much.  Damn.  Bite mark on the foot starts swelling, redness.  Itchy as eff.  

Made a cuppa.  Iced the foot.  No one here with me.  No car ( True love at work).  Waiting, waiting.  Started doing the dishes.  Painful but okay.  

As I type this, truey has come home, all is good.  

Moral for Bally.  "Tap yer footwear inside the house from now on stupid."

Having a run of bad luck lately with the mowers, car and worst of all the outside above ground pool which  was over flowing in the rain.  I jumped to to clean it and boom!!! .  The result is another story. (Suffice to say, my weight didn't help.)  True love pissed her pants as I surfed down the back paddock.


Kind regards,

Sigh,  Big Bally)))

[Michigan Swamp Buck]

Everything Down Under is poisonous, deadly, will kick your ass, and then eat you. All in about one minute when you least expect it. 

Australia is meaner and tougher than Detroit, do I got that right?

[BIAD]

I checked with the large English spiders that inhabit my garage and they all agreed that their antipodean
arachnid cousins are really bad hombres. It's said that that Aussie spiders regularly rent videos of MS-13
for their comedic aspects.


Some facts are straight forward black-and-white, Michigan Swamp Buck is dead on the money with his
suggestion and I'm sure it's written in a Hebrew text somewhere that Australia is where God put all the
worst human-tormenting shoe-dwelling critters.

But I may be in error on that last part.

[Bally002]

Everything Down Under is poisonous, deadly, will kick your ass, and then eat you. All in about one minute when you least expect it. 

Australia is meaner and tougher than Detroit, do I got that right?

Yeah, if you are unwary.  Worst infectious bite I got was from a 'white tailed spider'.  Bit the back of my neck after I put a shirt on.

Caught the bugger.

Now that was years ago.  Subsequently the bite area swells up every now and then and ends up in a pus ball.  Very annoying.

'Jack Jumper'  ants got me one time too.  That wasn't nice.  My fault again.  I stepped on their nest while trimming a tree.  

And yes their are other things I've encountered and learnt the hard way.

Now I've got to check everything in the house before I wear it or sleep in it.

But I love my home.

Cheers,

Bally))))

[F2d5thCav]

Bally,

Good that you're recovering.  Sounds like the American West ... scorpions etc. can get into footwear.

Cheers--

[Bally002]

I checked with the large English spiders that inhabit my garage and they all agreed that their antipodean
arachnid cousins are really bad hombres. It's said that that Aussie spiders regularly rent videos of MS-13
for their comedic aspects.


Some facts are straight forward black-and-white, Michigan Swamp Buck is dead on the money with his
suggestion and I'm sure it's written in a Hebrew text somewhere that Australia is where God put all the
worst human-tormenting shoe-dwelling critters.

But I may be in error on that last part.

That's right.  I tend to leave the spiders alone except ones I identify as poisonous.  Plenty of Red Backs around here and the odd Funnel Web.  I dispatch them, not just for me but for the others and the animals.

Quite a few snakes this time of year and again I tend to leave them alone except when the poisonous variety get into the house.  The Pythons are fine.

I have a particular dislike for the large centipieds.  Creepy wriggly critters they are.  Nasty stinging bite too.  

Foots fine now, just itchy.  Ironic that my mailbox is a  large milk can painted like a Red-back spider and mounted on a steel web with garden tongs for fangs.  Crafted by the previous owner who suffered from the fangs of one.

I kid you not.

Bally)))))

---

Bally,

Good that you're recovering.  Sounds like the American West ... scorpions etc. can get into footwear.

Cheers--

Thanks mate.  Haha.  I have a scorpion story too when I was out in the desert and a frightening late night (as a cop) encounter with a screaming woman who had a giant cockroach enter her private parts and was burrowing deeper.

I...I...I .....didn't know what to do.  Delivered her to the clinic.  It was hard to explain to the nurse what the symptoms were as the woman kept screaming unintelligibly.  Poor lady.

Bally)))))

[BIAD]

Thanks mate.  Haha.  I have a scorpion story too when I was out in the desert and a frightening late night (as a cop) encounter with a screaming woman who had a giant cockroach enter her private parts and was burrowing deeper.

I...I...I .....didn't know what to do.  Delivered her to the clinic.  It was hard to explain to the nurse what the symptoms were as the woman kept screaming unintelligibly.  Poor lady.

Bally)))))

[Ninurta]

Bally,

Good that you're recovering.  Sounds like the American West ... scorpions etc. can get into footwear.

Cheers--

Not just the west. I live in the Appalachian Rain Forest, and there are some formidable creepy-crawlies here, too. No scorpions that I've ran across yet, but some hand-sized spiders, some mean littler spiders - like Black Widows and Brown Recluses, among others - nasty assed centipedes, and great big millipedes - harmless but ugly. I found one that had been ran over by a car to kill it. It was about 7 inches long, and bigger around than a man's thumb. Harmless, but impressive.

It's mostly the spiders and centipedes that cause me to shake out my boots every day before putting them on, and even hanging my house slippers up so the critters have a harder time finding them to get into.

I killed two hand sized spiders in the house this year - one in the kitchen sink, and one that was sitting in the living room floor giving me the hairy eyeball.

There is some kind o spider here that I don't know what it's really called, but I call them "dancing spiders", because they "roll", right and left like a spun coin settling down, when they move. They are the only ones I know of that will come after you for no good reason. When I was in my 20's, I had one chase me across the floor trying to get at me. Every time I raised my foot to squash it, it would jump as high as my knees and straight at me, so I had to scoot backwards on my feet to keep it from landing on me. I finally killed it by picking up a boot and dropping it on it exactly when it landed on the floor.

We've got these little shiny black "Parson Spiders", too. I've never seen one outdoors, only inside houses. They won't do any serious damage, but sting like a mother for a good long while if one of them nails you.

Only one snake got into the house this year - that I saw, anyhow. It was a harmless Corn Snake. Some folks call them house snakes, because in the fall when temps start dropping, they tend to try to get into houses for shelter.

We also have timber rattlers, copperheads, and water moccasins. For some strange reason i could never fathom, the last county I lived in made it illegal to kill timber ratters. My position on that is that what the government doesn't know won't hurt them when it comes to dead rattlesnakes. I've not bothered to ask if it's legal to kill them in this county, because I really don't care about the legality of it - I'm reasonably sure about the morality of it. Legality and morality don't always coincide. The biggest timber rattler I've personally seen was about 6 foot long, but I've heard credible reports of 7 and 8 footers.

We've got some nasty stuff here, too, but nothing like Australia where everything actively wants to kill you. I'm thinking of investing 20 bucks or so into a "Bug A-Salt" rifle. It's like a shotgun that fires salt instead of pellets, designed to put an end to marauding creepy-crawlies.

.

[ancientlight]

Bally,

Good that you're recovering.  Sounds like the American West ... scorpions etc. can get into footwear.

Cheers--

There is some kind o spider here that I don't know what it's really called, but I call them "dancing spiders", because they "roll", right and left like a spun coin settling down, when they move. They are the only ones I know of that will come after you for no good reason. When I was in my 20's, I had one chase me across the floor trying to get at me. Every time I raised my foot to squash it, it would jump as high as my knees and straight at me, so I had to scoot backwards on my feet to keep it from landing on me. I finally killed it by picking up a boot and dropping it on it exactly when it landed on the floor.

Please tell me you're joking   Because I would not have survived that out of sheer terror ! How in the world does any spider jump as high as your knees!!! 

[SomeJackleg]

saw the thread title again on the main page, and a ditty popped in my head

got a spider in da hole

got a spider in da hole
got a spider in da hole
got a spider in da hole

all right, all right, all right, all right, all right

 oh yeah 

forgot to tap my crocs
kicked them off really fast
wound up with a shock
well kiss my ass

got a spider in da hole
got a spider in da hole
got a spider in da hole


spider makes break
i'm hopping up and down
pain i can't take
yelling sends my dogs running round
wife's gone to work,
my foot really hurts
sure hope i'm not hospital bound


got a spider in da hole
got a spider in da hole
got a spider in da hole

[Ninurta]

There is some kind o spider here that I don't know what it's really called, but I call them "dancing spiders", because they "roll", right and left like a spun coin settling down, when they move. They are the only ones I know of that will come after you for no good reason. When I was in my 20's, I had one chase me across the floor trying to get at me. Every time I raised my foot to squash it, it would jump as high as my knees and straight at me, so I had to scoot backwards on my feet to keep it from landing on me. I finally killed it by picking up a boot and dropping it on it exactly when it landed on the floor.

Please tell me you're joking   Because I would not have survived that out of sheer terror ! How in the world does any spider jump as high as your knees!!! 

Nope, not joking. They're about as big around as a silver dollar across the legs, and lightly built - not heavily built like a tarantula. I don't know how they jump like that. I presume it's a sudden change in the hydraulic pressure in their legs. I'm 6' 2" tall, so my knees are only about 18 or 20" off the ground. Considering that quarter inch long jumping spiders can jump 3 or 4 feet when hunting, the abilities of "dancing spiders" don't shock me all that much.

No dying. You're not allowed to die in the moment. There's that spider that needs killin', and dying don't help you get that done! You just have to handle it.

Speaking of jumping spiders, several years ago I was walking through the woods, minding my own business, and all of a sudden felt a burning, itching sensation on my upper left chest. I pulled my shirt back to see what was causing it, and lo and behold there was a tiny little juvenile jumping spider, maybe an eighth of an inch long, sitting there and digging in with feet and fangs, giving 'er all it had to try to bring me down.

That one didn't live long, either.

.

[727Sky]

spiders ain't nuthin ...compared to these bugs

[EndtheMadnessNow]

Reminds me of camping in the desert southwest. I learned the turn-over shoe and tap-tap-tap before inserting thy foot years ago. Only been stung twice and both times I was barefoot in the evening when the little critters come out hunting. I always carry a small blacklight flashlight to spot them. They are a frequent problem in the Las Vegas burbs. Imported from Mexico decades ago when the Vegas developers thought it was a cool idea to import palm trees from Mexico and yep the scorpions piggy backed on the palms. Aside from stomping them with your boot they are hard to kill and able to survive nuclear bomb radiation. Pesticides at Home Depot don't work that well. Have to get the industrial strength stuff.