Say hello to my little friend

[Ninurta]

It's good to know that I'm not the only man on the planet that shoots his spiders.

Although I do think the fella is a bit over-dressed for traditional spider hunting...


Australia is a bit like Pandora in the movie "Avatar" - everything there wants to kill everything else there and eat it's eyes for juju beans.

As an aside, we also have spider-hunting wasps here in these mountains called "mud daubers" that build nests out of mud stuck to surfaces, hunt spiders and immobilize then with a sting, then place the immobilized but still alive spiders inside the mud nests with their eggs so that the larvae have a live meal when they hatch out. I've never been stung by a mud dauber, and I don't know anyone who has. They apparently prefer to reserve their venom for spiders, and are not aggressive or territorial like normal wasps are. When I lived in Russell County, VA, it appeared that black widows were the preferred prey of mud-daubers, judging by which spiders fell out when a nest was broken open.
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[BIAD]

...Australia is a bit like Pandora in the movie "Avatar" - everything there wants to kill everything else there and eat it's eyes for juju beans...

I've heard that North American Sasquatch regularly receive correspondence from Yowies in Australia saying that
they may have made a wrong-turn at the Bering Strait ice-bridge and now have to contend with the most dangerous
animals on the planet.

But I just can't seem to find the source of the statement at the moment.

[guohua]

My husband says Australia is why Flame Throwers and Shotguns were invented. 

[BIAD]

My husband says Australia is why Flame Throwers and Shotguns were invented. 

 I agree and I can understand why!

[BIAD]

(Taken from another thread titled ' Spiders!!!!!!~')
17th June 2021.

I think I've told this yarn on another thread, but since this thread is called 'Spiders', I fear it won't do any harm
to repeat it.

I live in the UK and the largest of spiders that I've come across currently reside in the eaves of my garage.
One of them is called 'Boris' and he's fairly big and would struggle to fit in an average-sized matchbox.

But once when we were on holiday (vacationing -for our American brothers and sisters!) in Texas, I was accidentally
introduced to Boris' big brother.

My wife, son and I were staying in a motel in Houston and sometime in the early evening and for unknown reasons,
my better-half decided to look under the bed. There in the shadows lay Goliath, a hand-sized Arachnid who seemed
to be enjoying the coolness of the air-conditioned room.

Usually when a spider is seen skittering across the floor at home, my wife tends to move quickly and if there's no slipper
at-hand, she'll call for me with a sense of urgency. This time, I believe she realised Goliath demanded more respect.
Casually relating to me that a monster was sharing our room, I rose from reading a brochure for our next-day trip to the
Space Centre and took a look under the bed.

To estimate the size, I'd suggest using the Latin term 'fuckin' massive'... my usual machismo that is displayed as I rescue
my lady from the grips of these eight-legged beasts -I realised, just wouldn't cut it. No grabbing and quickly taking it to the
garden would do, no calm voice to my wife as the spider was sent packing would suffice, Goliath commanded that I fought
him head-on.

'Bring me my shield' are the words from a chivalric hymn and so slowly reaching for a motel-branded towel, I prepared myself
for the battle ahead. I'm at a loss to give the reader a full descriptive literary of what happened next -possibly because nothing
alarming really happened, but suffice to say, the multi-eyed grotesque was wrestled into the cloth and with a focus I reserve
for getting to a pub-counter or the time I actually locked BIAD in his shed, I made haste towards the motel room's door.

With a deft flick of my wrist, Goliath was hurled from my overnight kingdom and dropped unceremoniously onto the concrete
balcony walkway, sweat poured from my body as it occurred to me that I'd just saved my beloved and only child. Goliath seemed
incapable of reading my relief and merely showed his contempt by slowly unfurling his many appendages and walking away.

Somewhere far off and for reasons they'd never truly understand, burly Vikings were toasting my courage and offering their versions
of how to rebuke the the terrors that hide under places of slumber. For me... I went back to finishing my lukewarm bottle of soda
and to ruminate on why the heading on the brochure was spelled 'Center' instead of 'Centre'.


Ninurta would agree, evil never sleeps... it just waits under places you do.

[Ninurta]

The Tragic End of Super Rack-Nid

Tragically, Super Rack-Nid's days gave been cut short, and come to an end. 

It happened thusly.

As you know, Grace is not quite as mobile as once she was. At around 04: 38 this morning, she yelled to request my assistance in moving from one spot to another, immediately upon her awakening. So, being the dutiful husband I am, I rushed to comply. After I helped her from the bed, and en-route to her destination (I am at times the equivalent of a human walker for her), she suddenly stopped and stared at the bedroom wall. This is what she was staring at:





I've left the corner of the TV, a 52 inch monstrosity, and the end of a USB extension cable in the shot for size comparisons. A closer inspection shows this:




So, instead of proceeding to her desired destination, Grace steered me (as her human walker) into the living room, where she perched upon the sofa and refused to budge until I had done battle and vanquished the foe. I thought that a bit silly, in light of the merriment she had made of me for keeping track of Super Rack-Nid while he (or she) was staying on the basement stairs, but apparently invading the bedroom was just a bit over the edge. To Grace's credit, she did not jump and shout "fuck me running!" as I would have, but her steadfast reluctance to go down the hall speaks volumes all the same.

Grace insisted that it MUST be a monster, since she saw it asleep, blind, and in the dark.

I could not immediately find a swatter nor a handy shovel handle to beat the beast to death with, so the next best implement was a suggestion from Mrs, @"BIAD" - the slipper I was wearing at the time.

Stealthily slipping into the arena of battle, I gauged the distance and computed the odds of my demise vs. the demise of Super Rack-Nid, and finding the odds to be marginally favorable to me, I swiftly and violently sprang into action, and completely ended the interloper's all too short life. The final resting place, the mausoleum of the heroic Super Rack-Nid, was a Walmart shopping bag:




And so ended the days of the heroic Super Rack-Nid, the intrepid and dauntless explorer of regions best left alone.

It's not the first friend or pet I've killed, and likely will not be the last. Life is lonely at the top when folks cannot properly behave themselves, or stay in their places.

RIP Super Rack-Nid.

As an aside, you can bet your ass I am going to remind Grace of this incident the very next time she comments on how I squeal like a little girl at the sight of giant spiders. I may squeal, but I don't park my ass on a sofa and refuse to budge until the interloper is eradicated. After all, I'm the one that has to do the eradicating...

... because life is lonely in the command chair.

I still made Grace a pot of coffee, because some things are not negotiable, not even from the command chair.

.

[Kenzo]

The Tragic End of Super Rack-Nid

Tragically, Super Rack-Nid's days gave been cut short, and come to an end. 

It happened thusly.

As you know, Grace is not quite as mobile as once she was. At around 04: 38 this morning, she yelled to request my assistance in moving from one spot to another, immediately upon her awakening. So, being the dutiful husband I am, I rushed to comply. After I helped her from the bed, and en-route to her destination (I am at times the equivalent of a human walker for her), she suddenly stopped and stared at the bedroom wall. This is what she was staring at:





I've left the corner of the TV, a 52 inch monstrosity, and the end of a USB extension cable in the shot for size comparisons. A closer inspection shows this:




So, instead of proceeding to her desired destination, Grace steered me (as her human walker) into the living room, where she perched upon the sofa and refused to budge until I had done battle and vanquished the foe. I thought that a bit silly, in light of the merriment she had made of me for keeping track of Super Rack-Nid while he (or she) was staying on the basement stairs, but apparently invading the bedroom was just a bit over the edge. To Grace's credit, she did not jump and shout "fuck me running!" as I would have, but her steadfast reluctance to go down the hall speaks volumes all the same.

Grace insisted that it MUST be a monster, since she saw it asleep, blind, and in the dark.

I could not immediately find a swatter nor a handy shovel handle to beat the beast to death with, so the next best implement was a suggestion from Mrs, @"BIAD" - the slipper I was wearing at the time.

Stealthily slipping into the arena of battle, I gauged the distance and computed the odds of my demise vs. the demise of Super Rack-Nid, and finding the odds to be marginally favorable to me, I swiftly and violently sprang into action, and completely ended the interloper's all too short life. The final resting place, the mausoleum of the heroic Super Rack-Nid, was a Walmart shopping bag:




And so ended the days of the heroic Super Rack-Nid, the intrepid and dauntless explorer of regions best left alone.

It's not the first friend or pet I've killed, and likely will not be the last. Life is lonely at the top when folks cannot properly behave themselves, or stay in their places.

RIP Super Rack-Nid.

As an aside, you can bet your ass I am going to remind Grace of this incident the very next time she comments on how I squeal like a little girl at the sight of giant spiders. I may squeal, but I don't park my ass on a sofa and refuse to budge until the interloper is eradicated. After all, I'm the one that has to do the eradicating...

... because life is lonely in the command chair.

I still made Grace a pot of coffee, because some things are not negotiable, not even from the command chair.

.

Well i am relieved.  Such beast left alive could jeopardize national security, at home level..

[Ninurta]

Well i am relieved.  Such beast left alive could jeopardize national security, at home level..

It was heart-breaking. I was just about to commission a saddle for the beastie from a leather-worker of my acquaintance.

I do understand about the threat to National Security at the granular level, however. I think it is somewhat amusing that it did not become a deadly issue for Grace until it was an invasion of HER turf, though!

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[Ninurta]

I mentioned, in a previous post, the "saber-tooth" spiders we have here. While I was looking for an image of a retro T-shirt of @"BIAD" for another post, I ran across some photos of one, which I will drop in here:





You can fairly easily see the saber-tooth fangs I refer to on his business end. And it has stripes, like any other self-respecting tiger! It's hairy, but it ain't a tarantula. I once saw some Indians in Panama eat some tarantulas, like they were eating crab or something. They used the fangs, after their meal, to pick their teeth with... and the tarantula fangs were even bigger than these.

This one was already dead when I found it in the kitchen floor. I didn't worry about it so much as I worried about what was able to kill it that I never saw!

Bonus denizens of my jungle here - 

A local mosquito, trying to break into my house through the deck door:



One of our giant millipedes. This one was about 7 inches long, and someone had run over it with a car, thinking they were killing a snake:





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