posted 04-10-2001 15:46            

I am on a quest for the perfect guy. Does he need to be gorgeous? no. Have a well-paying job that will support my expensive tastes? no. Cook for me? no.

He needs to kill spiders for me. The rest is just icing on the cake.

While in the shower this morning, I was soaping up my hair and noticed movement on the ceiling out of the corner of my eye. To my intense trepidation, it was a spider. An alarmingly active spider. It started sinking down on it's little silken thread of mayhem to about my eye level. I kept an eye on it at all times while I washed my hair.

It started swinging back and forth in the steamy air currents.

It kept getting closer and closer as it built up momentum. I was debating yelling for help, when at the extreme edge of the arc, as close to me as it could get, it cut loose, obviously on the attack.

So I did the only sensible thing. I screamed, leaped to the side, almost pulled the shower curtain down on myself and knocked the shampoo bottle into the tub. While I was in midair, the spider swirled in the water between my feet and stopped under the fallen shampoo bottle.

So now this little arachnid of death is using my shampoo bottle as a life-raft, marshalling its resources for another potentially fatal attack. My scream, alas, was not enough to wake my BF. Ordinarily, I can run out of a room, fetch him and have him save me if needed, but as I was soapy and wet, this obviously was not an option.

So I gritted my teeth and kicked the shampoo bottle, hoping to dislodge the spider. No go. He didn't appear. So expecting at any moment to feel his fangs sinking into my hand, I picked up the bottle and looked at the underside. He wasn't there! And after checking to make sure he hadn't run around to the front to ambush me, I came to the conclusion he had already washed down the drain.

There I was, expecting something like a cross between arachniphobia and the shower scene in Psycho and he was already gone.

Still, a stalwart protector who had the foresight to be with me at all times, even in the shower in case of imminent attack by 8-legged killing machines, would have eased my mind considerably.

If you're interested in applying for this position, please email me a recent photo and a resume of Spiders-You-Have-Killed. I am willing to look into peaceful solutions such as catch-and-release programs, as long as I don't have to touch them.

posted 04-11-2001 04:00            

Snag: Yes. Cake is good.

Everyone else: You all keep your grubby hands off of her! She's mine I tell you! MINE!!!

Bees, however, are completely evil. Especially when they buzz around you while you're driving 60mph.

Bex likes bees.... and they sting!

-Chris

posted 04-11-2001 10:17            

If I snoozed peacefully away while you were running around screaming like a girl and swatting your own head during a bee attack, you'd be disappointed too.

Folks, I told him after the fact that I had had a near death experience and without even opening an eye he said "what? a spider? going back to sleep. " He obviously did not feel compelled to leap up and check for egg sacs or millions of little baby spiders lurking in the grout.

I think he wants me gone. That must be it.

And Candy Corn, I can't kill spiders, or even risk them walking on me long enough to dump them outside. I think they're great little creatures, I just don't want them anywhere near me. Phobias are funny that way. Don't get me started on my tick phobia.

But oddly enough, I love snakes, mice, bats and other "icky" animals. They just have to have less than 8 legs.

posted 04-11-2001 10:26         

Okay, this is a true story.

I'm taking a shower at camp once, and suddenly I feel something hit the top of my head and bounce away. I'm looking around to see what it was, and then I saw it.

There was a pale green frog with big eyes, hanging by one arm from the soap dish after it had hit my head, and it was staring back at me. Just hanging, and staring, and staring.

Seriously, it was creepy. And I don't get creeped out easily. I moved to the next shower stall and continued.

posted 04-11-2001 10:49            

You got creeped out by what was probably a tree frog and you expect that to beat my spider story?? If I had been hit in the head with a wayward frog, I probably would have picked it up and ran around showing it to people. I'd be excited, not creeped out.

Man, frogs don't even have teeth! About the worst they can do is pee on you.

posted 04-11-2001 11:56         

What was creepy was that it looked like the frog should not have been inhabiting the region I was in. And it was hanging by the soap tray by one arm, completely still, and staring at me. It was all very surreal.

posted 04-11-2001 12:09            

When there's a lobster in your tub.

posted 04-11-2001 12:56            

I would love to get wakened by my GF when she's all soapy and wet...

posted 04-11-2001 13:54            

psyci, even a frog with a blank and soulless stare is not scary. Your hard head probably stunned him. Imagine if that were a great big hairy wolf spider thumping off your head and then dangling by a thread from the soap dish.

Amazon, your roach story is going to give ME nightmares.

posted 04-11-2001 14:23            

I would have believed you if you said crabs.

But not lobster.

posted 04-11-2001 15:35            

Now... this.. ummm.. exquistedly(sp?) disgusting feeling got me all ludicrous for a second and I clawed at my face. Saw it on the ground, and stompped it.

Demon of Elru : Kills spiders DEAD!

Hehehe.. needless to say, I don't use shaving cream anymore. I dunno why though, but I just don't.

I also have a somewhat horrorstory. When I was young(maybe 5-6ish), we had a weird neighbor. This guy next door invited me and my family over for something(dinner I think, I don't remember for sure.) I had to goto the bathroom. So I went, and I heard a noise in the bathtub. Being the stupid child I was(ever seen a child paint the grass?), I looked into the bathtub. Now, to my horror, I saw a turtle in the shower. Not any turtle, a gargantu-girthen turtle. I mean MASSIVE. This thing filled the bathtub. I ran to my parents, told them about it, and the guy said it was his pet. We never went over there again, wedon't remember who is is, but we just call him "that weird neighbor" now. He moved out, so thats good.

BTW - where I live, there is a river next to my house, which, for a long time had industrial waste dumped into it from the Mills. The land is filled with Asbestos and other good stuff, so weird animals are normal here. Like the 2-tailed fish I saw(no joke) and a worm-thing the size of a pringles can(again, not joking.) I haven't the slightest about how these things came into being, and I don't really want to know.

posted 04-12-2001 10:25            

I recently attended a gardening lecture given by a woman who just loves insects and various other little creepy-crawlies. She was telling how she had these cardboard boxes in her garage that eventually developed the inevitable fluffy white spider egg cases in the creases. She was looking at the mama-spiders sitting on these cases and wondered if they had any maternal instinct. So she picked one up, moved it across the floor and watched it walk back. It went directly to its own box, patted its egg case and settled down.

She repeated this experiment but took the spider outside her garage. It did the same thing.

She repeated this a number of times, eventually ending up about a half mile down the road. As she was casually following the spider back home, she saw a sign for an exterminator, showing a photo of a brown recluse spider and asking "do you know who is living in your house?"

You guessed it, she had a garage full of brown recluse spiders and had been playing with them unknowingly.

To those who don't know why this is a big deal, they are one of the more poisonous spiders we have. They tend to live in people's houses and hide in shoes and bedding and other places where you are likely to accidentally piss them off. Here's a gross photo of what a bite looks like.

Interestingly enough, black widows also tend to live quiet lives very close to people. Places like entrances to houses, garages, outhouses, etc are popular hangouts. Remember that when you reach for the TP while camping!

posted 04-12-2001 10:37            

This is a weevil. The long sucking mouthparts are characteristic.

This is a weeble (it wobbles but it won't fall down).

But I suspect they what Der Senfmeister was eating were flour beetles.

Either way they're crunchy and I wouldn't want them in my cornflakes.

-Bex

posted 04-12-2001 12:30         

i'm all for god's creatures and all but anything which can cause spreading necrotic lesions had better stay out of a couple miles radius of me, keep out of sight, or prepare to squish.

there was just a story on some news wire a few months back. not a recluse, but one with a similar poison, bit a guy in his sleep while his immune system was suppressed by a flu. by the time anyone figured out what had happened they had to remove his leg.

now that's a damned creepy spider story.

posted 04-12-2001 17:00            

I was barefoot, and this damn thing was so big I didn't wanna stomp it, because I figured it would stick to my foot - and on the way back up it might get in a dying bite. So as I'm looking for something to squish it with, InThrees PRODUCES MY DAMNED BLOWTORCH.

"No, PeeT! You are NOT blowtorching my linoleum floor!"

PeeT (InThrees) ignores this command and fires the blowtorch, obviously getting ready to melt my kitchen floor into goo so's he can see the spider curl up.

So, still not having located anything to squish a spider with... I dropped rapidly to my knees and delivered a hammering right cross.

The spider gibbed.