Not what you want for a neighbor.

[icarus]

This is the spider that I took out of our bathtub in a jar last night. It was a good three and a half inches across, hanging out threateningly over the cat's water dish.

Yes. I noticed the fact that it tried to bite me through the jar.

Repeatedly.

Yes, turns out it is a Hobo Spider. Yes, it is poisonous.

About 50% of Hobo Spider bites are 'dry,' meaning that no venom is injected and nothing happens to the victim. In fact, often times the victim does not even realize that he has been bit. Typically, when venom is injected, the victim will experience an immediate redness which develops around the bite then begins to disappear within a few hours. Very often, for the first 24 hours, the bite appears to be no worse than that of a mosquito; then it begins to blister in the center. Within 24 to 36 hours the blister breaks open, leaving an open, oozing ulceration.

This ulceration 'scabs' over within three weeks from the initial bite, leaving a permanent scar. If the bite is delivered in fatty tissue, the lesion may be very deep and extensive, not healing for over two or three years. Systematic reactions to Hobo Spider poisoning include severe headaches, nausea, vomiting, soreness and flu-like symptoms.

I thought that spider seemed a little cocky. wildernessguru's gonna freak and want to bomb the entire apartment with napalm.

Now the cat's bugging me. Lay off, kitty, and show some gratitude. I may have saved your life last night.

Comments

[orange-bastard.livejournal.com]

OMFG that's horrible! I'm glad you trapped it and no one got bit! One time, I caught a black widow that had an abdomen half an inch long.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Yeah, me too. I'm a little bug-eyed. I confess to locking the bathroom door last night and briefly hoping it would go away. *reopened door* No such luck.

When I went online I hoped that it was just a very large jumping spider that was not even remotely dangerous (if scary-looking). Turns out that this bastard is native to (elsewhere) but has followed shipping lanes from (elsewhere) and turned up in Seattle. It's as poisonous as our native U.S. brown spider.

*bug-eyed*

Yeah, when I took it outside I set down the jar and ran.

Icarus

[anothersuperboy.livejournal.com]

Yep, I think that calls for napalm, dude. O_O

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I see smoking towels in our future....

[mz-bstone.livejournal.com]

Hobo and Giant House Spiders look a fair bit a like. GHS are not particularly venomous.

http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=giant+house+spider&meta=

B

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Wow, they look very similar. Are they equally aggressive, I wonder? They do trap and attack prey the same way.

I hope this was a Giant House Spider. I'd hate to have unleashed another Hobo Spider on the world, but I don't believe in the bash-it-with-a-shoe approach to pest control.

Icarus

[tonicollins.livejournal.com]

Wow, you're... whatever the insect word is for humanitarian because if I saw that in my house, it would get beaten to death with a fly swatter or, if on a tile surface, stood on and ground into dust.

If it has more than four legs, it dies.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's WG's usual approach, only generally involving some sort of male overkill (instead of a flyswatter, the spider meets the ass-end of a 10-pound barbell). I'm much happier with my method. Better karma, and if this is a Giant House spider and not a Hobo, then it will keep the population of poisonous Hobo spiders down (they compete in the wild).

Icarus

[florahart]

How'd you identify it? There are hobos in the PNW, but there are also giant house spiders that are nearly indistinguishable from them without at least a magnifying glass, that are non poisonous (well, other than, you know, the 25 bites all welted up and gross on my legs). Giant house spiders are more common by a lot. The distinguishing features are like, no pale barely-visible spots on sternums (that would be the belly side) and no parallel stripes on the thorax and stuff.

Doesn't mean you didn't have a hobo, course. I get big-ass giant house spiders a LOT--though less in this house than the last one I lived in. That house, they all had seven legs, which is, if possible, even creepier than 8-legged ones. My point here is, maybe it's a hobo, but maybe not, and no need to go all crazy with the napalm. Heh.

*has appropriate icon*

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I promise you this: I was not standing over it with a magnifying glass.

It could be either a Hobo or Giant House Spider, and I hope it's the latter. Because I have unleashed it free upon the world.

My point here is, maybe it's a hobo, but maybe not, and no need to go all crazy with the napalm. Heh.

WG is less sanguine about non-purring wildlife than I am.

The mere mention that a large spider (poisonous or otherwise) temporarily existed in our bathroom will send him on a killing spree. All my Buddhist lectures seem to have very little impact on this territorial drive.

Icarus

[stentoriansista.livejournal.com]

What sort of post-apocalyptic mutated landscape do you live in that has seven-legged spiders?!? And what made you think to *count*? ::shudder::

Icarus, you are a better human bean than I. I would have signed that things death warrant the minute I stopped screaming. Side note on the locking-the-door-and-hoping-it-goes-away plan: if it does indeed go away, you'll be wondering where exactly it's gotten to (like, inside your dresser or above your bed) and won't sleep easy for days. No, I like to keep crawly things right where I can see them until I can have them murdered by someone who doesn't scream like a little girl every time she tries to bash one with a shoe.

[kijikun.livejournal.com]

*fights urge clean and wash everything she owns just in case*

Hate spiders. Hate hate hate spiders.

*whimpers*

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I have to say that spiders, especially large frightening one, test my Buddhist Bodhisattva-ness to its limit. I no longer want to kill it or think I should, but man do I not want to carefully take it out of harm's (from us and to us) way.

But when I unlocked the bathroom door, it was still there. Damn.

Icarus

[chrissie-m.livejournal.com]

I do not know why I clicked on that link when you very clearly said 'spider.' Now my toes are all curling up and I've got goosebumps.

And I'm with WG's overkill approach, to heck with the bad karma. Creepy crawlies definitely get the barbell treatment here.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Ha. Well, I have this Buddhist training, plus a mother who grilled us on spiders. Spiders and ladybugs (in Michigan) were good. Mosquitos and ants and other critters were bad. That was the self-serving gardener's perspective on pest control.

Icarus

[izzybeth.livejournal.com]

thank you a million times over for linking to the photo and not actually posting it. glah. full-body shudders just thinking about it. (and yes, i was almost stupid enough to click. and that would have been my own fault.)

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Well, that's more laziness than kindness, but you're welcome. I'm still a little creeped out myself, though I feel better thinking that it was probably the non-poisonous Giant House Spider.

Icarus

[sffan.livejournal.com]

EEEEEEEEKKKKKK.

That's just nasty.

*shudder*

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

My first thought was "oh. Shit. I'm going to have to deal with that, aren't I? Yep. Hanging by cat-dish, it's either me or it bites kitty."

Icarus

O_O

[kagyakusha.livejournal.com]

and i thought the spiders in my bathroom were scary.

That one makes me cringe!!

Re: O_O

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I don't see a lot of spiders around here, but boy, when I did find one. O.O

Icarus

[aphephobia.livejournal.com]

Wow... the hobo spider sounds aggressive! (Though it's a goodlooking spider... wow.) Go you on jarring it and taking it outside.

And sheesh on the poison stuff. And people get so freaked out about Aussie animals. Pfft. The Hobo Spider bite sounds nasty.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

It was trying to sting me through the bottom of the glass jar. Yeesh.

The Hobo's not from around here, though. Probably from Southeast Asia.

Icarus

[enname.livejournal.com]

Ah, spiders. I have a tentative relationship with them, known as stay outside and get the mosquitoes. Come inside? I do not vouch for your safety.

Sounds like it has the same affect of a whitetail bite. In fact if the spider wasn't brown I'd be thinking it was a whitetail. That and whitetails are native to Australia, along with the billion other spiders of terribly nastiness. My dad got bitten by one and oh yeah, the ulcer? Not nice. He had it excised six times.

Around hee we have redbacks, HUGE daddy longlegs (you could saddle these things), trapdoors ... and the ever beautiful golden orb.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Oi. See, I'm from Michigan where last I looked, we didn't have poisonous spiders. We made up for it in deer-flies, horse-flies, and various types of wasps of course. Not to mention the mosquitos.

Yeah, camping in Michigan summer is an insect adventure.

Icarus

[harveywallbang.livejournal.com]

*shudders violently*... i shouldn't have looked at that picture, even for the split second that i did....now i'm itching all over...
thank goodness you caught it...
*shudders again*

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

It wasn't very hard to catch, fortunately. It just sat there for twenty minutes and was relatively cooperative about being scooped up into that jar (if only because it attempted to attack my hand through the glass).

Icarus

[slashophile.livejournal.com]

:screams: NO. Uck. Ew. I thought the spider I found was disgusting and it wasn't even an inch long. Oh GOD. I'd have freaked the hell out but good thought with the jar. Then killed the hell out of it.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I'd have freaked the hell out but good thought with the jar.

I was mostly concerned about what would happen if my cat found it, so it had to go outside. I suspect that kitty had already seen it though because he was very affectionate after I got rid of the spider. He's a gentle fellow and I think the spider the size of his face freaked him out.

Icarus

[bruinsfan.livejournal.com]

Back when I lived in my parents' basement, I was once awakened by the sound a spider made scampering across the floor. It looked like a Black House Spider, but had grown to the size of a small tarantula (or hamster). It escaped into a pile of paper sacks saved for recycling, causing me to escape to the upstairs recliner rather than sleep in that room.

I did find its nest in a potted plant of my mom's a few days later, and probably expended enough force in killing it that I would have gotten similar results hitting Cujo.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Okay, now that's a big spider.

We do freak out about these creepy-crawly things, don't we?

Icarus

[ansku]

Ouch and ewwwww. I'm so glad we don't have spiders like that in Finland... I freak out about the tiny harmless ones, that one would give me a stroke!

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I was not particularly happy to see it, frankly. Hey, I'm trying to reply to your review of Colony Atlantis and my email program keeps messing up, so I guess I'll say it here: thank you. I'm told the wistful imperfect ending fits SG-1, where things often turn out okay, but by no means perfect.

Icarus

[impetuousoddity.livejournal.com]

heh. and here I'd thought my arachnaphobia had laid off a bit ::shudders:: and I was so thinking of moving to seattle. ::shudders again:: is this a common problem for the region?

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Well, I've lived here ten years and this is the first time I've seen one, so, no, I don't think it's common.

Icarus

Ugh

[http://users.livejournal.com/meara_/]

I generally don't mind spiders and have no problem either killing them or hosing them down the drain (if they're in the bath tub) but that was just gross and ew and uck.

Years ago I was sitting in my boyfriend's back yard in the gazebo with him watching a fantastic thunder storm when I made the mistake of looking up and saw the hugest spider hanging just over our heads. Ah romance. The shrieking rather killed the moment.

A couple of years ago, I was having a little snooze on my couch and I could hear Mzungu playing with one of her toys. It was making the sound that a bunch of pins would make in a tin container; a bit irritating but otherwise ok. I roll over and settle in for a good solid snooze when it hits me like a ton of bricks that she doesn't have kitty toys that make that sound. I sit up and peer into my dining room and find her playing with a bat.

I immediately phoned my sister because I wanted her to bring my 6 year old nephew to remove it from my house. They weren't home. No one who could assist me with the bat was home. Mzungu kept playing with the thing and I kept trying to keep her away from it. Eventually I threw a blanket over the bat and locked the cat in the bedroom and got one of my neighbours to throw it off the balcony for me.

It was a wee bit of a crisis at Chez meara that night. Mzungu was mad at me for getting rid of her toy and everyone else just laughed.

Re: Ugh

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I almost regret posting about this because everytime someone replies they have an even worse spider story, *laughs*! I'm now waiting for someone to tell me about the 30 foot spider that sucked up entire houses, the helpless people screaming, falling out of windows....

Icarus