Monday, May 7, 2007

Ewww!


Ewww!

Ok the yuck factor on this one is pretty high.

I’m not generally one to get creeped out by crawly things like bugs and snakes and rodents. I will pluck beetles off my tomato plants, or caterpillars off the herbs, no big whoop. Spiders, on the other hand …. Uhg! I know they are beneficial, and yes I adored Charlotte’s Web, but they just give me the willies. Sorry.

So you can imagine the nightmares this story is going to give me.

Nine year old Jesse Courtney’s earache turned out to be two spiders living in his ear.

Go read it. Look at the pictures. Be grossed out all day.

11 comments:

celticfeminist said...

A - that picture, is incredible. Creepy as hell, yes, but incredible.

B - You just *had* to share that story, didn't you? And compel me to go read it and watch the video. He had freakin' spiders.in.his.ear!!! Dear darwin on toast I am going to be wigged out all week over that. OMG. *shudder*

Spiders fascinate me and give me the wiggins at the same time. They're so ... alien looking. I'm more creeped out, though, by the centipedes that love to live in our basement. Eight legs is one thing. But nothing on earth, or I'd venture to say even the universe, needs as many legs as a centipede has. It's even worse when you try to kill them, because then the legs detach and move all on their own.

Those bastards truly are creatures from hell. Ugh.

AND SPIDERS IN HIS EAR!! AAAAAHHH!

Brave Sir Robin said...

Spiders really freak me out.

Today at lunch I ran by the house to check the mail. Imagine my delight to find my package from Garden’s Alive had arrived.

Imagine my horror when this crawled out of the box.

On the same day I saw that spider in the ear story.

I definitely will not sleep tonight.

Talking of centipedes - check my flickr in about 15 or 20 minutes. I'll have to find the picture on my computer, but in Big Bend last year we saw thousands in Santa Elena canyon. I wouldn't want to hold one.

Camera Obscura said...

We usually have a really huge garden spider out front every year -- body about an inch long, black w/ yellow markings, leg-span another two or three inches. It builds a new web every night, several feet across, using the trees and bushes in front of the dining room window and the edge of the porch for anchors. In the morning once it gets warm, it rolls a leaf of the tree up like a tube and hides out in it all day.

My main grumble is the little guys the same color as the bathroom wall (translucent and off-white to barely-tan) that like to hide in my hand towel and give me a start when I dry my face first thing in the morning. They're harmless, but really not what I want to deal with at 5 am.

My biggest complaint ever w/ spiders were the black widows that liked to drop out of the bathroom exhaust fan while I was giving the kids a bath when we lived in CA. Camera kill! Bam! Bam!

They say we have tarantulas in the woods around here, but I've only seen them in nature centers. I do know we have fiddlebacks (brown recluses) in woodpiles and I've seen what the bite of one of 'em will do. Plenty nasty -- swelling, necrosis, etc.

Brave Sir Robin said...

Yes! stay away from the brown recluse. I worked with a gut how took a bite from a brown recluse while asleep in bed. He is now missing a huge hunk of his forearm.

Incidently, that's about the time I decided to stop sleeping in the nude.

Ahem.

Brave Sir Robin said...

sorry, I worked with a guy, not a gut.

Allthough, come to think of it, he did have a rather large beer gut.

:)

Anne said...

CO - is the garden spider a black & yellow argiope? We used to get those in the tomato plants every year. I thought they were fascinating.

We also get black widows where my parents live, so anytime you went out to the garage or (especially) the shed to get something, you had to be careful when you were moving things. Eventually we had one that decided to make its magnum opus in the door frame right next to the piano. It made me very nervous whenever I was practicing. I'm normally a "live and let live" type, but that one had to go. I really didn't relish the thought of hundreds of little baby black widows invading the house.

I'm mostly okay with spiders (it's cockroaches that really give me the willies), but having one--or two--in your ear? UGH! Then again, the idea of having ANYTHING foreign in my ear creeps me out.

Anne said...

Oh, and that picture is pretty cool. Kinda creepy, though. The one farthest to the left looks like a black widow.

Brave Sir Robin said...

How was Cali?

Anne said...

Good, or at least as good as could be expected under the circumstances... thanks for asking. It was helpful to see friendly faces, get hugs, and not be alone. Being back is hard, though.

Brave Sir Robin said...

Hang in there.

Camera Obscura said...

Anne, I'm no arachnophile. It's huge, it's pretty, and it runs the bumblebees out of the ajuga so we can get up the front walk and into the house.