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Spiders in Bed... Once I was staring at the ceiling at night and a spider dropped into my open eye! It crawled out, too. Eeeks!
Posts: 3141 | Registered: Apr 2000
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Oh Jenny, I do! I love watching insects, arachnids, slugs, snails, crustacians, fish, reptiles, amphibians, mammals, birds--you name it, if it's in kingdom Animalia I'm fascinated by it. Sometimes (well, quite a lot lately) I find myself wishing I'd gone into some sort of wildlife biology field.
The other day I was walking on a bike trail and saw what looked like a leaf suspended in midair about a foot above head height. It was a catterpiller type thing that seemed to be trying to crawl out of the top of its cocoon, which was partially composed of leaves. The whole thing was suspended on a line of web the thing had extruded. I probably watched if for a half hour. A lot of bikers looked at me like I was crazy during that time.
I would love to watch a spider weave one of those horizontal webs. In my new house, I may just get the chance.
Celia, have you ever read my account of a centipede (or actually maybe it was a millipede--I have a hard time keeping those straight) that attacked my wife in the night one time?
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Centipedes are actually very lucky. They are predators and eat cockroaches! They don't do any harm to you or your belongings. And, once you get over being creeped out by multi-leggedness, they are actually quite lovely.
Posts: 3141 | Registered: Apr 2000
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Well Jenny, I think that my wife might argue with you about that whole "centipedes are lucky" bit, but maybe the one that attacked her was just a bad seed.
Luckily, celia, the species that attacked her isn't found in the US. It pounced on her in Thailand.
It was about 12:30 at night, and we had just turned off the light and settled into bed. just as I started to drowse, she sat bolt upright in bed, then lept to her feet, screaming and dashing at her head and legs. I dove for the light switch, and when I turned it on whatever had been on her was gone, although it had left long scratches down her legs that were deep enough to be oozing a little bit of blood. Whatever it was had apparently fallen over the headboard into her hair. When she knocked it out of her hair, it had landed on her leg, and probably scratched it while trying to hang on while she was hopping around striking at it.
She washed out the scratches and put on some antibiotic ointment while I looked for whatever it was. I didn't really expect to find it--I figured that it had been some poor geko who was probably cowering in some corner, traumatized for life. I wasn't even really looking as I moved stuff out of the way, but was looking back at her, talking. I lifted up one of my boots, and she freaked out.
Looking around, I saw what must have been her assailant--a 7 inch long centipede with a burnt umber colored dorsal side and a kind of a sickly creamy yellow brown ventral side (as I would eventually find out), it's body about half an inch wide. It's legs, which projected up and out from its sides, were ivory colored, and were each another half an inch long (longer when extended), giving it an over all appearance of being an inch and a half or so wide. Its pincers were a gleaming black, and looked really sharp. I believe that it had fuzzy black antenna too, but I can't quite remember now (this was about 5 years ago).
My gut reaction was to crush it with my boot. I like bugs, but I've killed plenty of them without incident. Imagine my surprise, then, when the thing fought back. The boot, which I'd slammed down on the upper third or so of the thing, surged under my hand, and somehow it whipped its tail section around, found purchase on something, and started dragging itself, along with the boot, under the bed. I applied more force and pulled it back out, and the tail section started whipping up toward my hand at the top of the boot. It couldn't quite reach me, but I was pretty freaked out nonetheless. I grabbed my other boot and tried to pin town the tail. Apparently there was some crucial ganglion in the things butt, because when the edge of the boot's sole severed the final segement from the rest of the body the thing just dropped.
Surprisingly, we got back to sleep.
The next morning we asked the guest house owner about it, and she said that there were two types, a centipede and a millipede. She said that that centipede had a venemous bite, but was so fast that it wasn't possible that I'd actually been able to catch and kill it. The millipede, she said, was much slower, and was completely harmless. She expected that I'd killed one of those. We felt much better until, a month or so later when we were back in the States, we were flipping around and caught a segement (pardon the pun) of some show about venomous insects in which this particular species was being profiled. Apparently their venom is fairly potent, and increases in potency as the things get larger (unlike snakes). The one on TV, they said, could put an adult into a coma with a single bite. The one we dealt with was an inch longer than that.
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Just to get back to mosquitoes for a minute...
My brother went hiking on the Appalachian trail when he was 13. The mosquitos were so bad that summer, that nothing seemed to work. In a desperate attempt to keep mosquitoes away, all the kids in the group he was with combined their insect repellants.
When a mosquito came in contact with this combined spray, it disintegrated.
Totally anecdotal, and I have no clue what the combination really was. But I find it amusing.
Posts: 4112 | Registered: May 2001
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Ralphie--I know! The actual event wasn't as bad as realizing that if the thing had waited a half hour until we'd fallen asleep, she wouldn't have been aware of it, and might have rolled over on it, provoking it to bite and kill her. Holy crap.
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Noemon: Yikes! I was referring to our native centipedes, not those nasty tropical Asian ones. Come to think of it, I remember my grandpa telling stories of giant centipedes his shipmates encountered during World War 2. One fellow had a livid red streak across his body from a giant centipede. Must have been a similar species.
And our native centipedes can bite, and they do have venom, but unless you try to catch one with your bare hands, you're pretty safe.
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I've been looking online for a picture of the centipede, and while I've found relatives, I haven't found the exact species. Seeing the pictures, though, I did remember one thing--the last segement of the thing was kind of forked, in such a way that it looked a little like a head with kind of rigid antenna. I was a little concerned that I'd brought the boot down on the wrong end of the thing (although I figured that those pincers were a pretty good indicator of a head), so you can imagine why I was concerned when the tail section started whipping at my hand.
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Jenny, I've got a question for you. In David Brin's Kiln People, the following exchange takes place (actually, if you haven't read Kiln People and intend to, the following could be seen as a Spoiler of sorts, so:
***SPOILER***alert for David Brin's Kiln People
quote:"Albert, do you know what happens inside a chrysalis?" "A chrys...you mean a cocoon? Like when a caterpillar--" "--turns into a butterfly. People envision a simple transformation: the caterpillar's legs turn into the butterfly's legs, for instance. Seems logical, no? That the caterpillar's head and brain would server the butterfly in much the same way? Continuity of memory and being. Metamorphosis was seen as a cosmetic change of outer tools and coverings, while the entitly within--"
....
"People think the catterpillar changes into a butterfly, but that doesn't happen! After spinning a chrysalis around itself, the caterpillar dissolves! The whole creature melts into nutrient soup, serving only to nourish a tiny embryo that feeds and grows into something else. Something altogether different!"
....
Caterpillar and butterfly share a lineage of chromosomes, Albert. But their genomes are separate, coexisting in parallel. The need each other...to reproduce
...and also a new question. After many days of pouring rain, a torrent of slab ants has apparently decided that one of my kitchen cabinets is a much better place to forage than the outdoors. My wife discovered them last night when she bit into an ant infested granola bar.
What is the best way to persuade them to leave without using pesticide? For the time being I've just moved everything out of the cabinet and put down a piece of tinfoil with a pool of honey on it, which is keeping them busy and distracting them from the rest of my food. I've heard that baby powder clogs their pores, and that borax and powdered laundry soap strip off necessary protective coatings, killing them. Would it be enough to put laundry soap right around the area where they're coming in? My wife wants to get some of those little ant bait things, but I really hate using pesticides (especially in a cabinet that will eventually be holding my food again), so I'd rather find another way.
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There was a spider hanging from my ceiling by some kind of pus colored substance coming from an aperture in its abdomen about 1 cm across, and it was *squealing*. Really, I swear. Ms. Bugga Bugga, you ever hear of this?
Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
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Really? I've never heard of anything like that. How big was the spider? How loud were the squeals? If you listened *really* closely, could you hear another voice somewhere nearby saying
A Elbereth Gilthoniel, silivren penna miriel o menel aglar elenath! Na-chaered palan-diriel o galadhremmin ennorath, Fanuilos, le linnathon nef aear, si nef aearon!
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
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Caterpillars to butterflies: I really don't know!
Minor ant invasions: Sounds like the ants have just come in out of the rain. To encourage them to forage elsewhere, you need to thoroughly clean your kitchen and especially your cupboards. Get rid of any food crumblies that may be lying about. I clean with a mix of vinegar, dish soap, hot water, and essential oils. Mint in particular discourages ants. Because ants rely on scent trails, they don't like hanging around strong odors. If you feel the need to kill, diotomaceous earth and borax will indeed harm them. But try the supercleaning and I bet in a few days the ants will go back to their regular trails outdoors. It does take a couple of days, and you have to keep up with the supercleaning, but where there is no food and an abundance of unpleasant odors (to the ants), the insects have no desire to hang around.
Screaming spider: This spider was severely injured. The pus was its inner fluids. I know that tarantulas can "scream" by forcing air across some of their exoskeleton. Perhaps this poor thing was doing the same. Poor thing. It was probably dying. Posts: 3141 | Registered: Apr 2000
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I'd actually prefer not to kill if I can help it, but the sheer volume of ants made me think that it was probably going to be necessary. They kind of looked like they were planning on moving in.
The thing is, I didn't have a lot of crumbs out or anything--to get to food, they had to chew through one and sometimes two layers of packaging. I'd pick up a wrapped granola bar, for example, and crumbs would come pouring out of the holes they'd made in the wrapper.
I'll give the thorough cleaning a try though; certainly can't hurt.
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
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Holes in the wrapper? That sounds SERIOUS! Are you sure you don't have mice, and that the ants are cleaning up after?
I think, if the ants are that aggressive, you'd better use the baits. They do work pretty effectively.
Posts: 3141 | Registered: Apr 2000
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Yep, I'm sure Jenny. I mean, I actually have had a mouse problem in the recent past, but this isn't a cabinet that mice could get into (metal, mounted on the wall, no holes burrowed through the wall behind it.
The ants probably numbered in the thousands. The floor of the cabinet was pretty much a roiling black mass (and these ants are pretty tiny). They ate their way through plastic bags, foil/plastic wrappers, and thick paper wrappers. It was really a mess.
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Not really much of a question, Jenny, but I thought you'd find an incredibly brief article from the March 20th issue of New Scientist interesting. It deals with a species of spider called Tidarren sisyphoides, the male of which species weighs only 1% as much as the females do. In order for the male to be able to mate with the female of the species, he must sport "disproportionately huge copulatory organs, known as pedipalps." Fully 20% of the male's weight is in its pedipalps. Shortly before adulthood, the male tears of one of his pedipalps. In tests, monopedipalpic males were 44% faster that their duopedipalpic companions. Interesting, eh? That's an awful lot of metabolic energy being wasted on the development of that second pedipalp.
The pedipalps are used in feeding as well as mating, right? I wonder how difficult it is to a monopedipalpic spider to eat?
posted
Here's a bug question for you: A couple months ago there was a discussion about Diatomaceous Earth as a pesticide. What are you thoughts on DE?
Posts: 995 | Registered: May 2003
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Whoa, baby, nice pedipalps! I bet those spiders look scary to little children. Cool.
I have some diotamaceous earth, but I don't know how effective it is. I tried mixing it with sugar water when we had an ant invasion, but I don't know if the ants just gave up or if the DE killed them. I do know you don't want to breathe it. It's a very natural way to deal with pests, though, seeing as how it's just the skeletons of microscopic marine organisms.
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Hey, I was just about to post the Snopes link! No fair!
By the way, I think Snopes' conjecture that the creepy-crawlies in question were simply held close to the camera is probably the correct explanation for their apparently huge size. Still not something I'm eager to meet.
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Cool critters. Obviously not spiders, as they have 10 legs. I might have guessed whipscorpions. They don't have any poison, just big ol' mandibles. I'm wondering, though, what are all those little white things hanging off the lower one? They look like sacs of some kind. And I wouldn't be surprised if they get big - many arthropods do. But big does not equal dangerous. They're only creepy because their morphology is so alien to most humans.
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I'm also wondering what the soldiers are doing to the poor creatures. Why are they dangling them like that?
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I had a friend who went to Kuwait for a summer military gig and he said those camel spiders seem to chase people, but what they're really doing is trying to stay in a shadow. If that thought comforts anyone having nightmares about being chased by a giant spider.
Posts: 377 | Registered: May 1999
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This seems like the right place for it. This weekend is BugBowl at Purdue, and while Mommy Bugga Bugga was unable to make it, I was there with another friend.
I wanted to eat all sorts of insects, but the only ones I could find were chocolate covered crickets and lolly-pops with meal worms in them.
*yum*
The 14th annual roach race ended with both of us losers. I was so sure Happy Gene Pool would take it, and she was counting on My Precious (yeah, sired and damed by Gollum Ghast and The Fat Hobbit). Though, I have to say, the tractor pull with the Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches was way more fun to watch. And, of course, Purdue won that one.
I've also now been introduced to the concept of honey tastings. Sweet.
Sorry you couldn't make it, Jenny. We'll have to try this again next year.
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