Twice in the past year or so there has been a fire within minutes of my home that has resulted in the evacuation of nearby residents due to the risk of propane tank explosion. Luckily those residents weren't me, I don't 'do' evacuations.
When the ice caps flood the earth I'm banking on living away from seas and rivers.
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This jaunty little fellow introduced himself to me one evening before Christmas by falling from the ceiling of my bathroom on a near-miss trajectory with my head, landing with an audible thump on the tiles. Whilst not a particularly portly specimen, I'd never seen the like before, and its crab-red legs and pasty white baked-bean body urged me to investigate it even as I was capturing it in its plastic cell. Turns out that the little bastard is a woodlouse spider, cunningly named for its woodlouse-based diet, but what is most striking is the fact that this is one of the few spiders in the UK that can actually break the skin due to its formidable woodlouse-shell crushing mandibles.
The teeth are the arachnid equivalent of a sabretooth tiger's and can quite easily be seen protuding greedily from it's red head, so I'm pretty glad it didn't land on target.
Spiders are no stranger to my home and I regularly come across many from the spindly to the wolfish, all getting chucked into the garden after brief plastic incarceration, but I've never seen this ugly species in all my 28 years.
I crossed the road to throw him in a copse.
This is a picture of one taken by someone with a better camera. You can just about see the fangs.
Don't do evacuations? We have been on many an evacuation together, back in the day, my friend. The panic, the urgency, the tedium...
ReplyDeleteI had arachnophobia as a kid, the phobia...not the film.
ReplyDeleteIt stemmed from my mother consistently scaring the bejeesus out of me by dangling assorted vegetable off cuts that vaguely resembled spiders in front of me, mostly when I least expected it.
One of the things that helped me get over it was a now defunked idea that none of them in this country would be able to do me any harm. They're small see...how could they hurt me? I'm big.
With big teeth. Thats how.
Godammit I won't sleep tonight.
I thought I asked for something about your sex life.
ReplyDeleteStill, at least it's not anime.
That crackling noise, the one that's getting louder, sounds like hail almost. It's coming from inside your house. Oh god...no...woodlice...millions, billions...can't fend them off...gah....if only....ACK.
I find a scenario in which you are unable to 'fend off' woodlice utterly ridiculous, even more utterly than utterly butterly.
ReplyDeleteDavey - just don't go doing handstands outside near piles of festering wood.