Dicing with white death (spider)

Posted on by inkbiotic

spider1

On candy stripe legs the Spiderman comes
Softly through the shadow of the evening sun

The Cure  – Lullaby

Word of the day: Hebenon – anything with poisonous juices

I found this attractive chap while I was weeding today. He didn’t like me shoving my phone in his face, so he reared his front legs up, I could almost hear the angry chatter of spider teeth.

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When a cockroach sheds its skin, its soft new hide is white until it darkens to red. I thought maybe it was the same with spiders, which also shed their skin. But no! This is actually a white spider. So there were two possibilities.

A white widow – deadly like the black widow, though sort of unlikely to be in this country.

A white death crab spider – It has venom, but its teeth aren’t strong enough to pierce human skin.

I was leaning strongly towards the white widow, but the actual evidence swung the other way. Still beautiful though, even if he couldn’t kill me.

Other events:

Barry the barrowman jumped out in front of me and started dancing around singing Singing in the Rain. I said a polite hello and carried on walking. It felt wrong to do that, but he’s not a good person and I’m not going to humour him anymore.

Back at base, Mike was ranting about bumble wasps, and how a million of them had taken over the tractor.

‘Look! Just look, they’ll attack! Millions of ’em.’

‘There aren’t any there, Mike,’ I explained.

‘Look!’ he shrieked and ran out into the rain as one solitary bumble bee drifted out of the ground.

14 thoughts on “Dicing with white death (spider)”

  2. *brrrrrrrrr*…. I am seriously arachnophobic. Just thinking of such thing makes me shudder. And I tx the Universum for the vacuum cleaners.

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    1. I hope the pictures weren’t too disturbing then! I’m quite fond of spiders, but totally understand why other people wouldn’t be.

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