spiders

The Pitter-Patter Of Tiny Feet

/ Diane Henders / 37 Comments

The other day I was reaching for a towel after my shower, and I thought, “It’s nice that there aren’t so many spiders in the house anymore.”

Spiders were an unexpected consequence of moving into a newly constructed home.  While it stood vacant, the open soffits and myriad gaps in the foundation made our new house an arachnid haven.  For months after we moved in, spiders were a frequent sight; so much so that Hubby began to consider some kind of scheme to extract rent payments from our many squatters.

We’re not particularly bothered by spiders, so when we found one we’d usually usher it out the door unharmed; although if it was a particularly inconvenient time or location it sometimes got squished instead.

Which brings me back to the shower.  Shortly after we had moved in, I’d finished my morning shower and grabbed the towel off the towel bar.  I was drying off when an odd sensation made me look down… in time to see a largish black spider crawling up my stomach, apparently making a play for my left boob.

I’m don’t shriek or spaz out over spiders.   After you’ve had a spider crawling on your tongue, you tend to be a little less excitable about those sorts of things; but nevertheless I moved quite… *ahem*… briskly to rid myself of my unwanted suitor.  He didn’t survive the experience.

And that very day, I developed a new habit of vigorously shaking out my towel before using it.  Even though I haven’t seen a spider in the bathroom for months, I still do it.  And it’ll probably be a lifelong habit since BC is home to black widow spiders and brown recluse spiders, and I have a healthy respect for both.

But not a phobia.  I’m slightly ashamed to admit that I find humour in the reactions of the poor folks who do suffer from arachnophobia… like a guy I used to know.

It was a hot day and we were working outside.  I went in to get a glass of water and brought one out for him, too.  He accepted it with thanks, took a sip… and then flung it at me.  I dodged, the glass flew across the yard and rolled down the sidewalk, and I demanded, “WHAT THE…????”

Pale-faced and wide-eyed, he stammered, “A spider.  There was a spider on the bottom.”

Miraculously, the glass hadn’t broken.  When I retrieved it and pointed out the harmless piece of detritus stuck to the bottom, he was sheepish but unrepentant.  “It looked like a spider when I saw it through the bottom of the glass.  I’d do the same again.  Spiders, brrrr!”

Arachnophobes would heartily endorse his reaction, but even they would have to laugh at this story that actually made the news:  A father walks through a spiderweb and the whole family freaks out at the fact that the spider is now in the house… only to discover that they’ve inadvertently captured the whole show on video.

I’m actually feeling sorry for the guy, but my sympathy might be a bit difficult to discern behind my tears of laughter…

Fear Factor: Creepy-Crawly Edition

/ Diane Henders / 42 Comments

Warning: There’s a snake photo at the bottom of this post!  (Just thought I’d mention that for those who hate/fear snakes.)

No Fear Factor would be complete without a few creepy-crawlies, so here we go:

Even though I’ve had quite a few close encounters with things that crawl and slither, most of them don’t really creep me out.

(See what I did there? ‘Creep’ me out…?)

*ahem*  Sorry.

Anyway, I’ll start with spiders (and I don’t mean the lovable Spider Webb from my books).

I guess after you’ve had a large spider walking around in your mouth it’s hard to get too wound up about bugs of any sort. Mind you, I didn’t tongue the spider intentionally. I just didn’t realize the potential consequences of drinking from a hose without letting it run for a few seconds first. That poor spider probably achieved low-earth orbit when I spat him out. (The world’s first spidernaut: One small step for man; eight giant steps for arachnids…)

Over the years I’ve lifted spiders off my eyebrows, shaken them out of my hair, and, if statistics are to be believed, probably eaten close to a dozen in my sleep by now. Spiders don’t bother me.

But wood ticks?

Bleah!!! I hate wood ticks! They’re bad enough when they’re crawling around all flat and icky but once they latch on and get engorged to the size of revolting dead-white grapes… *shudders*

Before the advent of flea-and-tick collars, picking engorged ticks off the cats and dogs on the farm was a disgusting but necessary chore. It was too bad they didn’t make flea-and-tick collars for humans, too, because after being outdoors in Manitoba we almost always had to evict a couple from our clothes or bodies.

Moving on to the crawlies: I’m not crazy about centipedes, mainly because I’ve heard they bite. But wooly-bear caterpillars are cute. As kids we loved to pick them up and watch them curl into a furry ball. Then after a few seconds they’d relax and crawl around our palms while we giggled at the tickly sensation.

Cold-blooded crawlies don’t bother me, either. My fifth-grade teacher confided to my mother with some dismay, “All the other children bring me flowers. Diane brings me salamanders!”

I didn’t mean to upset her. It was just that the other kids were tormenting the poor salamanders, so I rescued them and carried them home to release by our pond after school. I kept hoping they’d stay and have families, but I never saw them again. (Maybe I should have tried bringing two salamanders home. Clearly I didn’t think that part through.)

And then there are the ‘slitheries’.  I class leeches under ‘slitheries’, and they revolt me; but then again I figure it’s probably healthy to harbour an aversion to critters that want to suck my blood.  (No vampires for me, either, thank you very much.)

Snakes, on the other hand…

Years ago, friends had a six-foot long boa constrictor who loved to cuddle up and tuck his nose under my hair where it was nice and warm.

Years ago, friends had a six-foot long boa constrictor who loved to cuddle up and tuck his nose under my hair where it was nice and warm.

Snakes are okay, but I do prefer a little advance warning. Sudden snakes are rarely a good thing, particularly if you’re poking around one of our desert micro-climates where the rattlesnakes hang out.

Snakes in quantity are another thing entirely. The garter snake pits at Narcisse, Manitoba are amazing (click on the videos at the bottom of their page if you dare). I don’t know how they all manage to untangle themselves. Apparently the accepted collective nouns for snakes are ‘bed’, ‘pit’, ‘den’, ‘knot’, and ‘nest’, but I think a ‘macramé of snakes’ would be appropriate.

Which creepy-crawly do you loathe the most?

P.S.  You may have noticed that my site was down for the better part of a day last week.  My domain host crapped out completely (yes, I’m switching to a new one now) and all my emails vanished into cyberspace.  If you emailed me any time within the past couple of weeks but didn’t get a reply, please resend your message.  I promise I’m not ignoring you!

Beetle Chips And Other Stories

/ Diane Henders / 40 Comments

I was probably too young to remember when my mother admonished me not to eat bugs, but I’m sure she must have. I really would have preferred to follow her advice.

I realize there are some parts of the world where bugs are, if not delicacies, at least a dietary staple. Even here in Canada I’ve seen cricket lollipops and chocolate-covered grasshoppers, but I’ve never tried them. Hell, I grew up on the prairies. Once you’ve smelled the stomach-churning scent of grasshopper guts slowly barbequing on a hot engine and seen a 12” worm squeeze out of a cricket’s butt, you’re pretty much over the idea of eating grasshoppers and crickets.

Which makes the accidental ingestion of bugs that much more revolting to me. I’ve never experienced the clichéd ‘bite into an apple and find half a worm’, thank goodness. But I’ve come perilously close to devouring a couple of giant shiny black beetles.

Okay, they weren’t exactly ‘giant’ – they were probably only about an inch long. But still. That’s pretty-damn-big when we’re talking about bugs in food.

Once I was absently munching chips while reading. I don’t know what made me look into the bag at precisely the right instant, but there it was: a big black beetle lying belly-up and tastily coated in sour-cream-and-onion powder. My next mouthful would’ve had a very odd taste indeed.

Then I remembered I’d taken that bag of chips on a camping trip the week before, and apparently I’d picked up a hitchhiker. At least he died happy, surrounded by more food than he could ever eat. But I carefully avoided thinking about what he might have left behind on the chips.

Another time I was startled by exactly the same type of black beetle scuttling out of a peach pit as I cut the peach open. Fortunately I hadn’t bitten into the peach, or I’d have gotten a squirmy mouthful.

And I’m an authority on squirmy mouthfuls, after the time I drank from a garden hose and ended up with a large spider crawling across my tongue. That cured me of drinking from the garden hose without letting it run for a while first.

I’m sure I’ve eaten my fair share of carrot maggots – they’re exactly the same colour as carrots, and I’d eaten quite a few carrots before I realized what was causing those itty-bitty tunnels. And I’ve definitely had my fill of gnats or whatever those bugs are that hover in giant clouds over the road. If you’re on a bike or even walking fast, there’s just no way to avoid them short of suicidal evasive action.

All this was brought to my mind a few weeks ago when I bolted awake in the middle of the night. As I’ve mentioned before, it doesn’t take much to make me do that, but this time it wasn’t a false alarm. Something was definitely wrong.

Then I realized there was a funny taste in my mouth. And there had been a lot of fruit flies around…

Anybody else got bug stories? Have you ever intentionally eaten bugs?