HA. When I was in college, tarantulas were plentiful. I had a few as "pets" for a day or two in an empty pitcher in my dorm room. I certainly wouldn't want to do a fear factor style let tarantulas crawl over me, but they just don't really scare me. I can move faster than they can...
Im actually reminded of how the other day I walked outside and one of those giant cockroaches flew down and landed on my shorts. I had my phone in one hand and a drink in the other. I started tap-dancing that thing off my leg and then it flailed around while I was trying to step on it. After the commotion ended, I realized my Ring Doorbell captured the entire moment. That is probably the most viewed tweet Ive ever posted...
Re:Myth of the Brown Recluse
by anon4738383 on Thursday October 25, 2018 @01:20AM
(#18298693)
When I was a kid, my grandparents had a home at Lake Arrowhead in Texas. On the way to or from town, we came upon a tarantula migration with around a hundred thousand tarantulas crossing the road.. so many you couldn't see any land without them. My grandmother (smh) opened the car door to gawk at them, which is dumb because they can rub those fiberglass-like hairs off their bodies as a defense mechanism.
Where I'm at in Chico, CA has hundred or thousands of black widows... you definitely don't put gloves on without shaking or rolling them up.
Re:Myth of the Brown Recluse
by SOLAR_FIELDS on Thursday October 25, 2018 @12:52AM
(#18298620)
As a Texan as well, I've been lucky to have never have been bitten by a tarantula. I've never heard what you are saying about bowels before regarding being bitten. What I have heard is that the bite itself hurts a lot more vs a black widow or brown recluse but the venom is pretty weak comparatively.
Re:Myth of the Brown Recluse
by bradknowles on Thursday October 25, 2018 @01:07AM
(#18298659)
In this case, bowel evacuation has less to do with being bitten by a tarantula and much more to do with literally having the shit scared out of you on seeing this thing inside your house.
Yup, it's a real thing.
Re:Myth of the Brown Recluse
by bradknowles on Thursday October 25, 2018 @01:09AM
(#18298667)
Oh, and wasp-wise, the scariest thing I've seen are the Tarantula Hawk wasps.
Those things are ginormous.
And they hunt tarantulas.
'Nuff said.
But frankly, the scorpions bother me a lot more. Especially when they like to hide in your laundry, and drop down onto the floor at night from your attic. You can hear them when they hit the floor.
These days, I sit back one row from a guy we call "Spider Man", because his screen saver is nothing but giant pictures of spiders, 24x7. That will give you arachnophobia faster than anything I know of.
Growing up in Oklahoma, I met plenty of Black Widow and Brown Recluse spiders. My biology teacher collected them. He was extremely annoyed with me one day when I was cleaning some stuff up in the back of the room and the biggest brown recluse I've ever seen decided to take a quick trip up my arm. I managed to catch the thing and put it in a glass container filled with a clear liquid, and he looked at me like I was an idiot and told me "You know that water won't kill those things, right?" To which I replied "Yes, that's why the container is filled with alcohol." He really wanted that thing for his collection, and was quite miffed that I had actually managed to kill the sucker, before he could get his hands on it.
The bite from a brown recluse or a black widow may be worse than a black tarantula that is bigger than your hand, but in my experience, the effect on your bowels is much larger with the tarantula.