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Dirty-South Blues Harp forum: wail on! >
OT: Kingdom Of The Spiders
OT: Kingdom Of The Spiders
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Michael Rubin
330 posts
Nov 07, 2011
9:51 AM
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Two days before my wedding I received a phone call from my wife. She was at the hospital being treated for a spider bite. They were not sure, but they were concerned it might have been a brown recluse spider and they might have to dig out half of her leg.
She wound up having a permanent scar around the size of a half dollar. I had to make a real decision whether or not to go through with the wedding. I mean, it is an ugly scar. I mean, she used to be perfect, but suddenly, that was over.
I decided to go through with it, but only because my Dad had spent a lot of money on the wedding and I didn't want to get on his bad side. I mean, there's probably more where that came from, right?
I'm kidding. But it was a very scary phone call and she does have the half dollar scar.
Of course, 3 days later we were in Hawaii honeymooning where we had to go to the clinic three times to make sure everything was healing okay. They said it was and would continue to do so as long as my wife stayed out of the sun and the water.
I am not kidding about that last part. I also learned it is considered rude to enter a store and not buy something.
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5F6H
970 posts
Nov 07, 2011
1:42 PM
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Wow, Michael those brown recluse bites look like they can be pretty horrific, I wouldn't wish that on anyone!
I saw a program on them where victims could only get respite from the pain by tazering themselves! :-0 Talk about "a rock & a hard place"...I'll stick with my nippy little mouse spiders & never complain again ;-)
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www.myspace.com/markburness
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Sarge
80 posts
Nov 07, 2011
2:48 PM
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If I woke up with spider webs all over me I would go ballistic. I can't stand spiders. It's odd, snakes don't bother me a bit. I can pick them up no problem although I don't pick up copperheads and rattlesnakes.
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Wisdom does not always come with old age. Sometimes old age arrives alone.
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Miles Dewar
1154 posts
Nov 07, 2011
9:38 PM
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@Tolga7t, I don't have a digital camera and they would have been Very hard to photograph as they were Extremely tiny. I used to have a cheap camera but gave it to my little brother for skateboarding. I have a 35mm camera! lol. I'll take some pictures, develop them, and mail them to you. ;)
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@Michael Rubin, my first "encounter" with a venomous spider was a Brown Recluse victim. I was at a church member's home Catching spiders and a friend of the family came over with pins and wires sticking out of his arm. He was bitten, developed bad Necrosis and lost a large amount of use from his forearm and wrist.
After that, my brother and I have been deathly-afraid of spiders. With that fear came a big fascination too! I became obsessed with insects and spiders. Leading me to my aspirations of Biology and Entomology. Spiders are too fascinating to scare me now. Thus the Hours of laughs I got from my housemate's fears.
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This particular type of spider has incredibly strong silk. Even the hatchling's strands had noticable strength. I also do not see these particular orb-weavers around my house. They grow to Very large sizes and I frequently encounter them in fields, usually in a medium-high location, like trees or tops of tall plants (makes a large circular web pattern). It might be the early frosts we had led one to lay indoors, but who knows.
Last Edited by on Nov 07, 2011 9:41 PM
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Ant138
1135 posts
Nov 07, 2011
11:13 PM
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That is one of my worst nightmares.
I have an insane fear of spiders:o(
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arnenym
12 posts
Nov 08, 2011
1:34 AM
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Right now i'm ridiculous happy over the fact i'm living in a country where we have cold winters..
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isaacullah
1659 posts
Nov 08, 2011
7:58 AM
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@Miles: Every year, about this time, the back yard at my in-laws house in the Bay Area becomes infested with orb-web spiders (I'm talking in the hundreds). There webs are everywhere! You can't even go into the yard without walking face first into their webs. It's insane. One year, we were visiting over christmas, and were sleeping in a relatively unused guestroom off the back of the house. I woke up with a really really sore neck. Like the stiffest stiff neck you'd ever had. Well, I didn't think too much of it, but it didn't go away. After a couple of days, I noticed that the pain was changing locations, becoming more acute and focused on the back of my neck up into the lower portion of my scalp. So I asked my wife to look in there for me, and as soon as she did, she screamed! I looked in the mirror, and saw what I can only describe as a line of "flesh volcanoes" leading from the back of my neck up through the hairline onto the back of my head. The doctor said they weren't dire, that the spider(s) who did it to me were apparently only mildly venomous, or else I'd have died a long time back! I don't know if it was an orb-web or something else, but it was crazy man! They eventually healed up (after a couple of months) but I still have a bumpy line of scars back there, but luckily, my hair covers most of it!!! Now, my in-laws drop a bug bomb in that room before we come over! ;)
Oh, and for those that don't know, this is an orb-web:
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5F6H
971 posts
Nov 08, 2011
8:27 AM
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Isaac that's an Argiope, it is a type of orb web spider, we get a similar one in the UK Bruennichi's Argiope, or Wasp Spider.
@Ant - Don't worry, they haven't made it up the M5 as yet! :-)
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Ant138
1136 posts
Nov 08, 2011
11:16 PM
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If those are your garden spiders, i would hate to see your house spiders:o(
@5F6H, if they ever make it up the M5 im moving further north.
@Isaac, i dont think i could ever get over a spider crawling all over me and biting my neck.
I'm really glad sometimes that i live in one of the wettest, coldest places in hte U.K. The weather here is crap for most of the year:o)
I couldnt cope with the beasties you guy's get in the states and esspecially Austrailia, everything can kill you there!!
http://www.youtube.com/user/fiendant?feature=mhum
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5F6H
972 posts
Nov 09, 2011
12:15 AM
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@Ant - Don't have nightmares...especially as you realistically have more to fear from domestic pets & cows! Yes, cows kill 2-3 people a year in the UK but no one is scared of them! ...their big black, unblinking eyes, their slow, lumbering, inexorable march, their low mooo-ing, their wet pink noses & slathering, drool covered mouths....AAAAAARRRGGGGHHHH! Here come the cows and boy are they MAD...;-)
I read an interesting article stating that, for instance, most snake bites in the US involve men in their teens & early 20's & beer! A couple of bevvies seems to bring out the amateur snake wrangler in them...this was certainly the case for an Aussie who ended up losing an arm after being bitten by a brown snake several times. The problem was he couldn't get a good grip on it with his left hand, he couldn't possibly use his right hand because it would have meant putting his beer down! :-o
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isaacullah
1661 posts
Nov 09, 2011
8:26 AM
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Yeah, those suckers are all over back in the Bay Area! Huge webs too. I've seen some webs that must have spanned 8 feet or more. The webs are really beautiful too...
Here in AZ, the only critters I've run into so far are scorpions, and the odd black widow... Fun fact: scorpions glow under UV light, so if you want to go scorpion-huntin', the best time is at night with a hand-held black light!
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== I S A A C ==
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5F6H
975 posts
Nov 09, 2011
2:06 PM
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In the early part of the 20th Century tales of black widow bites were met with disbelief & regarded as old wives tales. In December '33 a curious scientist, named Gordon Grice, sat down with a black widow & a note pad, provoked the spider into biting him & sat ready to record the effects...he managed about half a page before the writing became illegible and an inky line traced his path as he collapsed under the desk! Now that's what I call real commitment to science!
Black widow bites are bad news but definitely survivable with medical treatment.
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www.myspace.com/markburness
Last Edited by on Nov 09, 2011 3:43 PM
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Steamrollin Stan
174 posts
Nov 10, 2011
12:56 AM
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The black widow has nothing on a good old Sydney Funnel Web spider, male / female, both will kill or make you seriously ill depending on the amount of venom they inject, google up "Atrax Robustus" Spiders are ok, just keep out of my domain!!
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