We get a lot of bugs around here, and I mean a LOT of bugs, here are just a few of our furry Arachnid friends.
I laid down on my bed one night with a nice glass of Port and a Ciggy to watch some telly, not sure what was on any more, might of been Game of Thrones ( How Fooken GOOD is that show right?). Anyway no sooner had I laid back on the pillows and taken a sip and sparked my durry, when I get 'that' feeling... You know 'THAT ONE ' where something..... is...... just...... not...... right.
I look up and here is this fella/shelia (I'm not sure and I wasn't asking), sitting there chowing down on a Gecko (poor bugger) right above my head at the top of the wall. I'm sure he gave me a wave at one stage with one of those Furry arms as I was taking pics as well.
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This next one was an involuntary pet of ours for a while, she is whats called a Bird Eating Spider or Australian Tarantula (Phlogiellus spp) .
We called her Charlotte ( Yeah, original right? Blame the kids) and she lived in a fish tank for a few months before we set her free again. We found her one early wet season night when one of our seven dog's was going absolutely batshit crazy on her chain barking at this magnificent beasty on the ground. she got a regular feed of crickets and small gecko's and had a nice little half hollow log to live in while she stayed, but the kids eventually got bored having a spider as a pet (not like I would let them play with it right) , so one night I set her free again.
I really love the character of this next lot, so small and quick as a flash but these little jumping spiders just seem to have so much personality and attitude that it is hard not to love them. This first one I spotted stalking a quite unlucky little grasshopper, I guess you can tell the outcome from the pics which I took while learning a new camera and lens, the pictures are a little poor quality but the story is still there.
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Nek second! Gotcha ya bastard, Num , Num, Num .
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This last one is just for the cuteness aspect, and was taken just after the last one on a different branch of the same tree if I remember correctly. It was checking me out checking it out at the time, and although it was only about a half centimeter in size it was still full of attitude as well.
What you lookin at arsehole ? , Got nothin better to do then harrass a little Spider ya Prick ?...Piss of and leave me alone Mate, I've got dinner to catch !
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Hope you all like these little and large residents we live with every day and my pics of them. I think my next post might be one about the night we had a couple of hundred million guest's arrive all at once.
I couldn't believe it when it happened despite seeing similar things before, but this one was like the end of the freaking world was happening.
You got some cool little-ish creatures down there! The first one eating a bloody gecko!!
Poor little barsteward!
@fractalizer To tell the truth mate I was shit scared of Spiders for over half my life and would squeal like a two year old having a lollipop taken away from them whenever I ever got close to one. It was not until I moved to North Queensland and had a job that required me to walk through the webs built each night, in the dark each morning, by Golden Orb spiders that I learned to deal with that fear. Their webs are very sticky and strong and HUGE they wrap around you when you walk into one and of course the spider is usually sitting in the middle looking for a way out of there.
(Source ABC Australia.)
I used to use a cheap plastic garden rake , waving it before me like some sort of sword to protect me from the Evil demon webs, but then I found that the spiders just crawled up it and ran up my arms and onto my head anyway which drove me into hysterical fits of body movements that resembled a person on fire, but not knowing what was alight, so just slapping himself everywhere just in case that was the spot the Spider was.
Cant imagine what the spider was thinking at the time.
A few months of that Cured me, Stumbling into the stables half drunk, getting covered in Icky Sticky Golden Orb Webs just became the norm and I'd flick those long legged Arachnids of me like you would a bird poop off your shoulder.
I figured out they didn't want to be there any more than I wanted them there so we were both on the same page.
Thanks for the reply fractal :)
Lol, you put a great image in my head of that experience!
I am the spider catcher here, everyone else would kill the little sods, so I pick em up an chuck em out, tell em don't come back and they don't! Just the rest of the family!!
I've got a seven year old Girl that hunt's spiders down and catches them with her bare hands, no word of a lie. She literally cradles them up in her hands and lets them crawl all over her and they never bite her ever. She spotlights them with a torch at night with their eye shine and brings them back to us for a look with no fear of them at all no matter their size.
Creeps me out.
When my youngest son was five or so, he used to catch the cockroaches in Houston, because my wife was so scared of them, he would grab them and chuck em out!
Like you say, no fear, if they haven't learned to be afraid (from adults), then no fear! So funny!!