Man, is this a big spider to find by the night light as you are going to bed. And man, am I glad I have a fearless husband to protect me. And man, do I get the shivers when I think about how many of these critters I might not see in the day. Or night.
(Comments open because you all had such lovely things to share about ticks, after all.)
Eeeeeewwwwwwww! Thanks for sharing. Blech.
Man, are you a brave lady to have photographed such a thing and I presume to have remained in the same house! Man, you would have heard me screaming a mile away!Eeeek.
Ummm…huge! I just can’t help but reflect on the size of this baby in comparison to the size of the outlet. Yuck! But, then again, don’t they say that spiders are a sign of a clean house? Yours must be spotless from the size of this guy! 🙂
Spiders are not "the bad guys". They eat flies and mosquitoes that spread disease and those moths that like to eat your clothes. Most spiders are not poisonous to humans.
Yikes! It’s gone now right? Nice thing to see before going to bed:0
Last week in the classroom I had a student all of a sudden screaming in the back of the room: a very tiny spider was walking over her books.
Al the other girls started freaking too (thirteenyear-olds) and they simply couldn’t believe I took my (empty) coffeecup and a piece of cardboard to catch the little critter and put him outside through the window.
As I’m a classics teacher, it gave me a nice chance to explain the story of Arachne, who thought she was a better weaver than Athena. They also won’t forget the word ‘fobos’ anymore 😉
Yikes!!! I recently encountered one at least that big crawling in my pile of laundry, then jumping to my 3 year old’s leg, then to mine as I dragged my three year old out of the laundry room, then behind the extra fridge. He emerged a week later, in the dark of night, just sitting on the floor in the doorway of the room in which I was attempting to quiet a wakeful toddler. Fortunately, my brave husband was willing to get out of bed (after I woke him) and come downstairs to kill the monster. The spider was apparently on his last legs and did not even attempt escape this time. Here’s hoping I never see one that big again!!
I’m impressed. How did you manage to hold the camera still? I’m sure it would have been a less-focussed pic if I’d been the one responsible for the shutter button!
My spider story is here on my frequently neglected blog http://a-merry-heart.blogspot.com/2006/09/political-incorrectness.html
I have posted a comment before, Danielle, but thanks for your blog – I always enjoy visiting here.
My children are terrified of bugs… Spiders and ‘bees’ worst of all – bees of course meaning anything striped yellow and black and having the capability to sting.
The only time I can remember my chilren not being terrified of spiders was when we had a nest of spiders in our hedge. Imagine a small, compact spiders web filled with more than millions of miniature spiders. Even I, who personally am not all that crazy about spiders, I tolerate them at best, I was amazed by the sight.
At least they were outside! 😉
I do not have a fearless husband when it comes to spiders, I’m glad you do! Both my husband and I would have run screaming from the room and called someone in to kill it.
Man, I thought we had big ones around here. Yikes!!!!!!!!!
That thing is a monster!
I am 5 days after being badly bitten by one. My entire forearm (and legs) is full with spider bites – they itch and are swollen, and my allergic reaction to it is that they spread a bit and those swellings ooze. They do bite even if not poisonous. It is still yikes!
Not a bug, but we discovered a mouse once on its last legs, and I had to get my oldest daughter to scoop it up into an old yogurt container. These little creatures do gross me out!
It sure looks like the one (I think mine was a trarantula though)I found out on my porch a while back. EWWWWWWW! I couldn’t bring myself to bash it with the broom so I swept it out to the street. My neighbor happened to pull up as I was doing that, asked what it was, walked over to her house and got a jar, PICKED UP the spider and placed it in the jar so she could show it to her boys when they came in from school! BRAVERY? INSANITY? I still haven’t decided.
Gee thanks… another spider story for me to have a bad dream about.
Last night just before bed I found a centipede (rivaling the size of that spidey) on the bathroom floor just as I was brushing my teeth. Sweet dreams, right!??!?! EEEK!
EEEK! I always used to be a yell for the man of the house to kill the spider person. Then I came to the realization if it escaped from my sight then I would have to worry about where it was still living in the house. Now I suck it up, hold my breath, grab the heaviest thing possible and whack away.
I am soooo spiderphobic. We live in a huge old farmhouse and have spiders that rival the size of my hand in our basement. They are hairy and can run faster than my 5 year old on a sugar high. YUCK OH! Since I have 3 little children, I have had to bite the bullet and kill the "little" buggers myself when the hubby isn’t home. I don’t want these monsters multiplying in my house or crawling on my kids!!! Much sympathy from this mom!
We were painting and cleaning and all that stuff you do before moving into an apartment. It was to be our first apartment which we rented a month before our wedding. It was in the old Italian section of Cleveland called Murray Hill.Where rent was cheap but everyone living there competed with each other to see who’s apartment was the cleanest. Our apartment had three small rooms right in a row. Living room, kitchen and bedroom. I really had them fixed so cute… Well the hot water tank was in the kitchen and while I was down on my hands and knees scrubing (remember those days, 47 years ago well probably before most of you were born)I saw this HUGE spider on the dial to adjust the tempature. I jumped up screaming and yelling help help. Then I remembered how fussy and clean all the neighbors were. I thought I can’t let them know I let a spider in here. They’ll all think I’m dirty. So I took a paper towel, I was squirming and breathing hard and I squished the poor big thing. Then I threw the paper towel into the bucket of soapy water to make sure it was gone…. flushed the water down the toilet and volla!!! I was so proud of myself and that got me over my fear of bugs and things smaller than me. Creepy crawley things, yucko……… But no fear anymore.
In 1947 we moved into a new home with a new baby and one night as I was preparing supper I noticed a black widow spider on the china closet in the dining area. I bundled up my baby and sat in the living room where I could keep an eye on the spider. I probably sat there for an hour waiting for that new daddy to get home and kill that monster.
I can deal with spiders, but I can’t handle cockroaches at all (bad for me living in SC, huh?)
Still, that’s nothing compared to Jennifer’s problems over at Et-Tu?…. SCORPIONS!!!! I’m still freaked out over reading about her problems….
ewwww…. I’m afraid to put my feet on the floor now!
I get big spiders like this in my basement. I usually find them when I am doing laundry. They are really fast, so they frequently get away as I try to squash them with whatever may be handy. They give me the shivers, too!
Christine
My 11 year old here in the south has 2 words to sum up that pic of the spider- oooh, COOL!!!! Teresa
ICK! I have phantom creepy crawlies all over now!
I make my brave husband flush twice when he flushes a bug…just in case it swims back up after the first flush! (Of course, it was squashed before it was flushed, but I figure you can’t be too careful, can you?)
We have spiders all over the outside of our house. I don’t love them, but unless they venture into the house I leave them alone. I hate to kill anything that kills all the other icky insects for me :).
Ugh! And I thought Dock spiders were bad. Not a post I should have read before going to sleep! You would not have found me going to bed in that room!
I don’t *like* killing spiders that big, but if I have to, I squash them with a large walking stick we’ve nicknamed "the bug stick."
Wasps are another story. I used to make my husband come home from work to kill wasps.
The ugliest critters I ever saw were in NC, and they’re called camel crickets. They look like some horrible alien from a bad science fiction movie.
"I just killed a huge spider in our yard," my husband said to me a few weeks ago.
"Really?" I said, eyes popping out. "How big was it?"
"You don’t want to know," he said.
"Yes, I do. How big was it?"
"You don’t want to know," he said again.
"Seriously, I need to know how huge the spiders are in our backyard. Tell me."
He paused. Now, if he had said anything, any size spider, anything other than what he actually said, I would’ve been OK with it. But no.
"I could see its fangs," he replied.
If I came across an abomination like that in MY BEDROOM, I would have to sleep in the car. For a week. And then fumigate. And then move to a new house. A house that is hermetically sealed and floating in a moat of flaming magma.
dido Faustina