Chris Crawford wrote:
> ...There's a
> Black Widow Spider who has taken up residence in my girlfriend's backyard
> storage shed. She wants it killed. I want to take a photo of it to sjow my
> son, he thinks spiders are cool. ...
I like your son already.
Do what I do - give the spider a name ('Charlotte' is too obvious - I go
through Kylie, Danni, Delvene, Noeline, Corinne, and so on, for the big
ones, and Jason, Craig, Jack, Bill, Graeme, for the smaller ones). It
doesn't always work, but a lot of people don't feel comfortable killing
something you're on first name terms with (it might be more to do with
how *you* react than any emotional connection they develop with the
spider ;-)
'Course, I once made the mistake of calling a large Huntsman spider (the
largest I've ever been in the presence of - about a 20cm legspan) that
was on my mother's front wall 'HOLYBLOODYMOTHEROFHELLSPAWNSATAN!", and
it thus didn't last very long in the face of irrational fear (not mine -
just several now-concerned mothers on a verandah covered in shoes). It's
the only time I've ever heard a lobster-claw-breaking crunch from a
convicted spider. Poor bugger.
When I was a kid, we'd keep large Huntsmen (Huntsmans?) in our school
lunchboxes, and take them out to handle and muck around with at breaks.
I wouldn't handle them now. Odd that. They're not deadly, nor
particularly poisonous (I'm not even sure if they have any poison - it
might just be an infection-reaction type thing you might get).
Cheers,
Marc
Sydney, Oz
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