just for fun

[lank]

i thought i'd share this:

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,24 ... 60,00.html

giant golden orb weaver spider eating a bird. believe it or not!

[Baak]

Holy ____! Only in Australia!

[HedgeSnake]

That is one impressive hunter! And his web must be incredibly strong to snatch a bird!!! I've heard of the world's largest spiders in South America that can eat birds, but I think they can be about 12" across including legs... they might be called plate spiders or something like that. This golden orb weaver is "only" about 6" across - but obviously it is an impressive hunter as well!

This must be spider week... three nights ago Mrs. HS and I were watching TV on our couch as usual when something to my right caught my eye. It was a large black spider crawling toward me on the couch! I am a bit arachnophobic (understatement of the year), so I immediately shot up off the couch, screamed like a teenage girl (which is actually a skill I have honed since junior high), and wet myself. I told Mrs. HS to move her a** because that thing was huge! She calmly got up and said "It's probably just a garden spider..." I put it into our large plastic "spider" cup (we use this to return spiders to the yard unharmed) and then tried to turn it over for some time to check for a red hour glass. This thing was probably the spider wrestling champion of the neighborhood given his ability to stay upright even when assaulted by a ruler. It was jet black and it was just plain ugly - so I really had to check it. Mrs. HS told me to put it into a clear glass (I'll leave out the part where she called me an idiot), and after finding a flashlight in the garage we managed to see the very striking bright red hourglass on its abdomen! Sure enough, it was a full grown friggin' black widow heading right over to watch TV with us! We immediately tore the couch apart, vacuumed all of it, checked the hideaway bed inside, and looked all over the room for any signs of a nest or anything. We have no idea where it came from... so I have not been sleeping too well since (I worry about the 3 HS juniors). Unfortunately, I could not return this one to the yard unharmed...

Mrs. HS says she has seen a few out in our backyard, which I never knew... even though we've been here over 8 years!

Yikes!

[Frumius]

What a great spider story, HS!

I'd like to put a few black widows and an Orb Weaver in a jar and see what goes down.

[Baak]

I'd like to put a few black widows and an Orb Weaver in a jar and see what goes down.

ala "Alien vs. Predator" ?


Mrs. Baak and I had a black widow show up out of the blue in the bedroom long ago (a couple of moves back), with no sign of any others in the house. No idea where it came from. Had to catch it with the vacuum (and as HS said - this one didn't get re-released like other spiders).

Only other time I've seen one was in Pagosa Springs in the garage in a dark corner. I left it alone and it left us alone.


I saw some HUGE spiders in Florida on a trip. There was a set of power lines on the drive between where we were staying and the house of a friend, and during the drive we noticed six or seven of these GIANTS whose webs spanned the wires vertically (which were easily four or five feet apart). You could see them up there from a block or two away, just sitting in their webs. Dang. The power line was surrounded by a large tree, so I could only imagine the tree being filled with dangling web pouches filled with stray cats and the occasional hitch-hiker... Freaked me out completely.



Speaking of being freaked out... Just a couple of weeks back we had a bizarre fly incident in the basement of the house we moved into in June. No idea if this is a seasonal thing (some have told us it is), but I came into the basement to change the furnace filter (the basement is huge and has a finished floor) and noticed around 10 or 20 flies on the windows - where it was warm (this was as the weather changed).

A couple days later I came back down to check the dehumidifier and there were easily 200+ flies - and I mean the half-inch deer flies - swarming on the windows. It was like The Birds. I was going to remove something and I was so spooked -- I didn't want them going off in a frenzy!

After trying a bug zapper (I won't even go into the details of this -- a mitigated disaster), I finally figured out to use the shop vac and apologized to them as a whole as I sucked them all up. They were big enough that I could feel them dinging the hose... The next day, I went out back and looked down at the windows to see what I could see...

In the sunlight on the windows there were easily another 200+ flies! All full grown! WTH?!?!

I couldn't tell if I was going to find thousands of them when I got down there, but luckily it was about the same amount. Dang I was spooked.

Vacuumed them up and over the next couple of days they basically stopped appearing. No idea what that was about.


What really freaked me out was the fact that the family who lived here before was from Japan (he worked for HP but the rest of the family spoke no English) and the basement door has no flap/barrier on the bottom (I put one there IMMEDIATELY after disovering them).

I could just imagine if this was a seasonal thing... Sometime in October THE FLIES COME... the family huddles in a corner shaking (they had two little kids), mumbling in Japanese about how Colorado must be haunted... not daring to turn on any lights in the house at night for fear of being swarmed...

[sillek]

Spiders ):

[HedgeSnake]

I just sent Baak some pictures of some amazing spiders I saw while in tropical Mexico a couple of years ago. I think spiders are amazing creatures - though they freak me out. They really are quite beautiful and the variety of their forms is astonishing! If I can figure out how to put them somewhere to share with everyone I will...

[Baak]

I just sent Baak some pictures of some amazing spiders I saw while in tropical Mexico a couple of years ago. I think spiders are amazing creatures - though they freak me out. They really are quite beautiful and the variety of their forms is astonishing! If I can figure out how to put them somewhere to share with everyone I will...

You have to post the images somewhere (e.g. your ISP web area or something), and then you use the Img tags to do something like:

[ img ]http://somesite.com/folder/image.jpg[ /img ]

(with the spaces removed from the img tags) -- it's what sillek just did.

[Baak]

Here's an example:

[vinylrake]

...Sure enough, it was a full grown friggin' black widow heading right over to watch TV with us! We immediately tore the couch apart, vacuumed all of it, checked the hideaway bed inside, and looked all over the room for any signs of a nest or anything. We have no idea where it came from... ...!

Man! Can you believe how slow the USMail is these days?