The Horror....AAEEEEIIIII!!!
I’m a grown man, at least in terms of years on earth. I’ve been around the block a time or two, had a few hairy experiences and been tested by exigent circumstances. Physically, I’m a large fellow at 6 feet and 250 pounds.
The point of the opening paragraph is not to extol the virtues of Yours Truly, but provide a background for the reader. I am no shrinking violet. However, I’ll be the first to admit there is one thing guaranteed to make me prance like flamenco dancer and shriek like a frightened schoolgirl: spiders, more specifically those large yellow and black jobs that live everyplace I want to visit during the fall months.
Both long-time readers might remember that I used to have similar feelings toward snakes but over time, that particular phobia has essentially gone by the wayside. Oh, I still shout and caper when surprised by a particularly sneaky reptile, but for the most part I have adopted a live-and-let-live attitude toward the critters. Sometimes I even walk closer for a visual examination. This is certainly not the case with spiders.
Your average, run-of-the-mill spider is a fairly innocuous fellow. They are content to spin a web, eat the occasional fly or grasshopper and care for their 43,429 tiny offspring. One in a while they put their web someplace that my face also chooses to go but even a spider web in the face is merely a nuisance.
However, those infernal spiders that appear during the early teal season and last until the first hard freeze could even horrify Steven King. The common name is Garden Spider, though I don’t know who in the world gave such a cute-sounding name to these beasts that undoubtedly guard the gates to Hades.
For those who don’t spend much time afield in September and October, I describe the arachnid in question. It is yellow and black, approximately the size of a gerbil and has legs that sometimes stretch larger than a man’s hand. It is known to occasionally pursue, kill and eat full-grown male deer.
That last paragraph may have been a bit of an exaggeration, but these things are bigger than they need to be.
A more appropriate name would be something like “Yellow Death” or the “Dog-eating spider”. I know that some readers might be shaking their heads in disgust at this rant because they know garden spiders are fairly benign and eat insect pests and are simply part of the great circle of life. But, before you write that letter to the editor, keep this in mind: I don’t care. Garden spiders are obviously evil.
You might wonder why I feel so strongly about this small, relatively insignificant part of the ecosystem. The answer is fairly simple if you have spent time bulling through the underbrush during spider season. Though you might have survived combat, an airplane crash or attack by a pack of rabid wolves, there is nothing so blood curdling as looking down to see one of these spiders ascending your leg after you accidentally walked into its web. I can’t even bring myself to write the words that describe what happens when the web is at face height.
The reason for this topic was an afternoon scouting walk this writer took a few days ago. I believed, quite reasonably, that the recent hard frosts had killed off the large spiders for this year. I knew a few smaller individuals were still conducting limited business but my belief was that the big boys were all raccoon food by now.
I couldn’t have been more wrong, but this error wasn’t discovered until I have several hundred yards into a chest-high field of weeks. To my great consternation, I looked up to see a great dew-soaked web glistening in the morning sun. It was a quite beautiful feat of Lilliputian engineering, except for the fact that there was a great bloody spider hanging in the middle of the strands.
Perhaps it was my imagination, but the spider appeared to be grinning as I noticed that there wasn’t just one web, but several, perhaps hundreds. Apparently he or she had invited aunts, uncles, cousins, nephews, nieces and other spidery kin folk to build their webs in this particular field of weeds. This sudden realization was greeted with great excitement on my part, so much so that I nearly became incontinent in my enthusiasm.
Since leaving the field would be as practical as a skydiver quitting halfway to the ground, I could only grit my teeth and walk on, picking a path through the webs. After what seemed like days, I eventually made it back to the car.
In retrospect, I was really no worse for the experience and someday I might even conquer this spider phobia.
As soon as the screaming stops.
Berea Forest and snakebite medicine
Smokies Hike September 2009
Twilight salmon
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Posted by Brent on 11/08/09 • Categorized as Out in the Open columns, WildBlog
The Horror....AAEEEEIIIII!!!
The point of the opening paragraph is not to extol the virtues of Yours Truly, but provide a background for the reader. I am no shrinking violet. However, I’ll be the first to admit there is one thing guaranteed to make me prance like flamenco dancer and shriek like a frightened schoolgirl: spiders, more specifically those large yellow and black jobs that live everyplace I want to visit during the fall months.
Both long-time readers might remember that I used to have similar feelings toward snakes but over time, that particular phobia has essentially gone by the wayside. Oh, I still shout and caper when surprised by a particularly sneaky reptile, but for the most part I have adopted a live-and-let-live attitude toward the critters. Sometimes I even walk closer for a visual examination. This is certainly not the case with spiders.
Your average, run-of-the-mill spider is a fairly innocuous fellow. They are content to spin a web, eat the occasional fly or grasshopper and care for their 43,429 tiny offspring. One in a while they put their web someplace that my face also chooses to go but even a spider web in the face is merely a nuisance.
However, those infernal spiders that appear during the early teal season and last until the first hard freeze could even horrify Steven King. The common name is Garden Spider, though I don’t know who in the world gave such a cute-sounding name to these beasts that undoubtedly guard the gates to Hades.
For those who don’t spend much time afield in September and October, I describe the arachnid in question. It is yellow and black, approximately the size of a gerbil and has legs that sometimes stretch larger than a man’s hand. It is known to occasionally pursue, kill and eat full-grown male deer.
That last paragraph may have been a bit of an exaggeration, but these things are bigger than they need to be.
A more appropriate name would be something like “Yellow Death” or the “Dog-eating spider”. I know that some readers might be shaking their heads in disgust at this rant because they know garden spiders are fairly benign and eat insect pests and are simply part of the great circle of life. But, before you write that letter to the editor, keep this in mind: I don’t care. Garden spiders are obviously evil.
You might wonder why I feel so strongly about this small, relatively insignificant part of the ecosystem. The answer is fairly simple if you have spent time bulling through the underbrush during spider season. Though you might have survived combat, an airplane crash or attack by a pack of rabid wolves, there is nothing so blood curdling as looking down to see one of these spiders ascending your leg after you accidentally walked into its web. I can’t even bring myself to write the words that describe what happens when the web is at face height.
The reason for this topic was an afternoon scouting walk this writer took a few days ago. I believed, quite reasonably, that the recent hard frosts had killed off the large spiders for this year. I knew a few smaller individuals were still conducting limited business but my belief was that the big boys were all raccoon food by now.
I couldn’t have been more wrong, but this error wasn’t discovered until I have several hundred yards into a chest-high field of weeks. To my great consternation, I looked up to see a great dew-soaked web glistening in the morning sun. It was a quite beautiful feat of Lilliputian engineering, except for the fact that there was a great bloody spider hanging in the middle of the strands.
Perhaps it was my imagination, but the spider appeared to be grinning as I noticed that there wasn’t just one web, but several, perhaps hundreds. Apparently he or she had invited aunts, uncles, cousins, nephews, nieces and other spidery kin folk to build their webs in this particular field of weeds. This sudden realization was greeted with great excitement on my part, so much so that I nearly became incontinent in my enthusiasm.
Since leaving the field would be as practical as a skydiver quitting halfway to the ground, I could only grit my teeth and walk on, picking a path through the webs. After what seemed like days, I eventually made it back to the car.
In retrospect, I was really no worse for the experience and someday I might even conquer this spider phobia.
As soon as the screaming stops.