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This is the thread for people who now have to set fire to their homes.

 
  

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Essential Dazzler
11:43 / 22.05.07
So it's come to this.

After 7 months in my current room, I've finally been confronted by a fucking spider. Not only that, it was the creepiest motherfucker I have ever seen.

Almost ephemeral, it's silk-like legs dreamily carried it's tiny translucent body down my monitor. If it wasn't quite clearly a fucking abomination, it might have been quite gorgeous.

Now I can feel it crawling all over me, and I keep hallucinating it rising like Cthulhu from dread R'yleh in the unholy depths that are the spaces between my keyboard's keys.

The moments after lifting any item have now become an eternity of pants-shitting dread.

Clearly, Napalm is my only option.
 
 
Triplets
12:08 / 22.05.07
What's that on the back of your chair?
 
 
Ticker
12:46 / 22.05.07
Your primate heritage is informing your fear.

Unless the critter is poisonous, you're just freaking out becuase you are wired to do so.

Get a glass jar and a piece of paper and escort the beastie off site. If you con't perhaps a housemate may offer an assist? I'm the resident spidah wrangler in my locale.
 
 
Evil Scientist
12:55 / 22.05.07
That spider is the reason you're not working for King Fly. You should honour the spider with a spider-dance, in spider-pants.

Do it! Marla, my tarantula, commands you!
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
12:58 / 22.05.07
 
 
Happy Dave Has Left
14:08 / 22.05.07
I'm not normally freaked out at all by spiders (I too, am the spidah wrangler round my neck of the woods), but in my last place, I was sitting watching TV one evening when I sensed movement in my peripheral vision. I turned around, and on the back of my chair was a spider that, legs spread, was probably about the size of my hand. Most of that was it's legs, but there was a fat little silvery-green body in the centre and, I swear, a little octet of orange eyes. It was not of the UK, that's for sure.

I yelled at the top of my voice and slammed the seat cushions onto it. I'm glad it was my primate instincts that made me do that though. I mean, ergh, the thought of having that thing in the house, or even outside it, freaked me well out. Probably poisonous.

I moved out, for unrelated reasons, a month later.
 
 
Happy Dave Has Left
14:12 / 22.05.07
Yo, that's it! Or, at least, it looked like that.
 
 
Eloi Tsabaoth
14:21 / 22.05.07
Why did I look? Why did I look?
After you with the petrol can.
 
 
This Sunday
14:36 / 22.05.07
7s, that's a pretty creepy spider, yes.

No one in my family has luck with spiders. I got bit by a black widow years ago. And last year, my mom and me got chased by an overly-aggressive ready-to-breed tarantula male. Literally chased about the yard, while the female spiders he was supposed to have sex with and die, were leaping all around completely ignored.

When my brother was much younger, he spraypainted what had been a very slick looking pale spider bright orange. I think he thought hitting it head-on with a coat of paint and pressure would kill it. It didn't, and continued to spin webs in the yard for days and our neighbor called the city on see a 'bright orange spider' thinking it was some weird mutant species of doom.

Overall, I doubt very many spiders need to be absolutely obliterated. Many are useful enough (eat bugs; leave webs, which are good if you're bleeding). Save that alien-entity fear for the roaches.
 
 
Ticker
14:47 / 22.05.07
Every Spring the shack I live in gets lousy with spidahs. Earned it the orignal name of the Spidah Shack. Out of all the creatures and things that I have to put up with they are the least of my worries. An occassional propeller will dangle down from the ceiling and then scramble back up. You pretty much hear the tiny 'oh shit' as the critter realizes you're looking at it.

I spend a lot of my time in fear of brown recluse spiders and their flesh necrotizing venom. However I've come to understand that the spidahs I'm likely to accuse of being a brown recluse are in fact harmless if scary looking non venomous ones.

Currently the shack is awash in Beezlebub and my spidah allies are a bit overwhelmed dealing with the thumb sized bottle flies. The spidahs must feel like cats with cattle dancing around their dinner plates. Combined with the skunk going off the handle under the kitchen and the major roof leak it may have come time at last to move on out of the shack. Crooked floors and spidahs I can handle, stinky and leaky is no fun.
 
 
grant
15:51 / 22.05.07
I get these in my yard regularly:



I... I let them touch me.
 
 
Happy Dave Has Left
15:55 / 22.05.07
*curls up into a ball*

It's something to do with the long legs, I swear.

Oh man, can someone change the thread title to include [PICS] because that's serious arachnaphobe-bait.
 
 
Closed for Business Time
16:01 / 22.05.07
Beautiful and scary. My mate's got a tarantula. It's the most docile "pet" I've ever seen. Have been meaning to ask him to let me hold it for like for ever. But that mokey fear keeps getting in the way.

Wanna? EEEK!! WANNA? EEEEEEEEEEK!!!
 
 
Elijah, Freelance Rabbi
16:29 / 22.05.07
WHERE THE FUCK DO YOU LIVE GRANT SO I NEVER GO THERE?!?!?!

Seriously, I can not handle shit like that. Primate ancestors, reptile brain, whatever.

ew ew ew ew ew ew ew

I can never go to Australia for fear of dinner plate sized spiders. Everything else there will kill you as well, but the spiders freak me out.
 
 
Quantum
16:49 / 22.05.07
grant you are wrong in the head. You're not a primate at all! You're spiderman!
UK spiders are harmless except for the terror, and since I hate flies, mozzies and such I don't mind them. Sometimes, though, when a big one runs out from under the sofa like a facehugger at the speed of sound with legs that are inches long, I scream like a girl.
I remember reading somewhere that there's your own bodyweight in spiders within a few metres of you *all the time* but all I could find online was "Spiders are abundant (over 1,000,000 individuals per acre in a grassy field)" and nothing on the average density of house spiders. Anyone?
 
 
*
17:02 / 22.05.07
I have a mate who says that he likes spiders generally, it's only that they have a tendency of dying of surprise when he's around. His surprise, o'course.
 
 
Mysterious Transfer Student
17:04 / 22.05.07
The average density of house spiders is so great that no proper studies have been done on the subject, since none of them could get it together to fill in the release form with the ballpoint pens provided.

If they were that smart would they really have let some sniggering rag-week arachnologist give them all that caffeine and LSD and fuck up their webs?
 
 
Ticker
17:11 / 22.05.07
It's beautiful, grant. What kind is it?
 
 
This Sunday
17:15 / 22.05.07
Actually, I'd say the real reason for no study would be to not scare us all undue. I don't mind spiders, in general, but if I really stopped and thought about all the little multileggy things hiding in every corner, under every box or dresser.

Outside crawly thingies don't bother me much, but inside I don't really like to make up population numbers in my head about it.

Does anybody else have the absolute revoltion and urge to absolutely destroy desert centipedes that I do? I can feel good about it because, y'know, they're dangerous and shoot stuff out of their forelegs, which is unnatural and wrong and I'm of a clearly superior species, but it does seem a tad irrational to go hammering them to death every time I see one.
 
 
Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero
17:17 / 22.05.07
Meh, spider's aren't so bad, I've got a whole family of brown recluse living in my house. We made a deal: in exchange for free, unmolested roaming privleges, they stay the hell out of my mouth when I sleep.

I know if one of those fuckers bites me it'll be bad news, but the treaty has held for years now so we're good. Nobody wants a war. Sometimes I see one of 'em speeding across the carpet and I wonder what ze's thinking in her little spider brain, but most of the time we leave each other in peace.
 
 
This Sunday
17:17 / 22.05.07
And, grant, how far below that spider is your hand? For scale purposes.
 
 
Kali, Queen of Kitteh
17:20 / 22.05.07
This is the worst thread EVAH.

Seriously. Spiders freak me out. I think I would have moved out if I had seen the one 7's did.

That very night.
 
 
Ticker
17:23 / 22.05.07
Meh, spider's aren't so bad, I've got a whole family of brown recluse living in my house. We made a deal: in exchange for free, unmolested roaming privleges, they stay the hell out of my mouth when I sleep.


Tuna, yer a brave and tolerant warrior of peace.
 
 
grant
17:27 / 22.05.07
To clarify, that's not my hand, it's the hand of someone with a similar heart to mine.

That's one of two kinds of spiders called "banana spiders" (the others are related to black widows and dangerously venomous). Nephila clavipes.

I remember once camping along the Peace River and canoeing under a banana spider web that stretched from bank to bank. It was like something out of The Hobbit.

This is also not my arm:



I include it here to reassure myself that I am not alone.
 
 
Essential Dazzler
17:34 / 22.05.07
I've had time to calm down now, I'm not hallucinating the little bugger so much now.

Also I'm a little (lot) proud. It was the first time in my life I actually dealt with a spider myself! The only other housemate around is also terrified.

This is the worst thread EVAH.

I just lost the game, people.
 
 
Essential Dazzler
17:35 / 22.05.07
AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

BEHIND A LINK GRANT PLEASE PLEASE I JUST SCREAMED AND WOKE A HOUSEMATE UP

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH


AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH
 
 
grant
17:40 / 22.05.07
What, like this one?
 
 
Essential Dazzler
17:41 / 22.05.07
AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
 
 
Ticker
17:42 / 22.05.07
NOT REALLY SCARY INFO: (just weird)

The male is about 1/5 the size of the female spider and is frequently oriented above and perpendicular to the female who hangs upside down. In some species, the female will often eat the male, but this is by no means a common occurrence. In the species that have been studied, mating occurs while the female is fresh from her last molt; this mating generally involves the dominant male which has been with the female for several days prior to the final molt. Later matings may occur while the female is eating (something else). The role of male presidence (if being first increases the number of fertilized eggs) is uncertain in this species, however female genital structure suggests that first males have an advantage.
Most female spiders have two independent insemination ducts, both ending in their own sperm storage organ, the spermatheca. Male African golden web orb spiders Nephila madagascariensis have two penises, both of which break off during sex. But generally can only fill one spermatheca at a time. In rare instances, parts of the male genitals can completely obstruct a female genital opening so giving it an advantage over other males mating with that female. Though scientists have found there to be no significant advantage in general over other males in mating otherwise.


Fascinating!
 
 
Ticker
17:43 / 22.05.07
oooh and:

Some "Golden silk orb-weavers" display an almost manic fear of cockroaches. The cockroach's fast movements and large, dark shape cause some of these spiders to run from or ignore a perfectly delectable meal. "Golden silk orb-weavers" are known to sometimes be cannibalistic with spiders that are even their same size.
 
 
grant
17:44 / 22.05.07
Look, really,

[+] [-] I'm sorry.
 
 
Saint Keggers
17:46 / 22.05.07
Not for the arachnophobic
party
 
 
grant
17:47 / 22.05.07
They're gorgeous!
 
 
Ticker
17:47 / 22.05.07
hahah eight legged kitteh!
 
 
grant
17:48 / 22.05.07
Male African golden web orb spiders Nephila madagascariensis have two penises, both of which break off during sex.

There's a good news/bad news thing for you....
 
  

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