Monday, December 11, 2006
Hairy, Brown Spider
Spiders freak me out.So yesterday, I’m waiting for a taxi, so I can run some errands for my mother. As I’m waiting, I feed Jack, the neighborhood cat, and his nameless sister. After spending a little effort, getting sister cat to trust me, I look up from my crouched position on the front porch, and see this big ass brown hairy spider. Now obviously, my perception is tainted by a familiarity with Daddy long-legs, and other hairless, thin, skinny, and need I state “SMALL” spiders. But, this spider looked huge.
So spider lovers everywhere, will be exclaiming, “…Daddy long-legs aren’t spiders, they’re technically…” Yeah, Whatever! So they are arthropods, but as far as I’m concern, that’s just another class of spider. Although they resemble spiders, daddy long-legs, more correctly called harvestmen, are neither spiders nor insects. Hah, hah, ha…cause that makes all the difference in the world. It’s an irrational fear, don’t go throw logic at it.
Taxonomically, they are arthropods, in the same class as spiders, Arachnida, but in a different order, Phalangida. Anatomically daddy long-legs differ from spiders because their three body segments—head, thorax and abdomen, are joined as one compact body segment. Spiders have two body segments—the head and thorax are joined as the cephalothorax, and the abdomen is the second body segment. Insects, which are taxonomically in the class Insecta, have three distinct body segments.
Let daddy long-legs crawl onto your hand. It won’t bite and you probably won’t even feel it unless its second pair of legs is gently touching and exploring your hand. Take a closer look. The tiny black dot on top of its body is a raised knob or tubercle with two minute black eyes peering out. The body supports six pairs of appendages, the chelicerae, pedipalps and four pairs of legs. The chelicerae or jaws, and the short leg-like pedipalps are used for sensing, capturing and holding food until it is eaten.
You can bet, I won’t be performing that tasks. That said, I have grown rather use to the little buggers, and unless they are doing something foolish, like crawling in or over my bed, or on the chair I’m currently sitting on, I tend to let them live—just not in my house.
But this spider was big and bulbous, hairy, brown, and scared the crap out of me. Needless to say, it was dead within a few minutes. That old useless frisbee that the neighbors left on the porch, finally had some good use. Normally, I’d be good and done with it, but as I said this spider was mentally huge to me. So I started wondering if it was poisonous, and what types of poisonous spiders can be found in Wisconsin. Maybe it was a baby Tarantula. Then I started, sweating. I killed it so fast, I really didn’t stop to pay any attention to the details, except the obvious ones.
So I started worrying, “Was it male or female?” Did I kill off pappa, and mama would move on, or Did I kill of baby Jake, and piss off a much larger, hairier spider, which might send it’s recent colony to come attack. What?! Attack of the Killer Ants, and Attack of the 50 foot Spider and those types of late 70’s, early 80’s horror films, trained me well. They didn’t even need to make them as large as they did. Just the though of attacking, multi-leg insects that move really, really fast was more than enough to full my morbid imagination.
I was worried enough to do some research. It’s not like I actually believed, mamma brown spider (most likely a common huntsman) was going to lead a charge into my room with fifty or hundreds of baby spiders; but one needs to be sure about these types of things. No one really minds when you off daddy. Killing the male of the species is the least likely to cause repercussions—like attacking Arachnida. But, I had also heard of the “Brown Recluse Spider” being in Wisconsin, and that someone in Janesville or somewhere really close to Madison, WI had located a Brown Widow (like the Black, but well brown). All in all, I had to do some research to alleviate my fears.
I’ve decided that the most likely candidate for frisbee splat spider was the common huntsman spider. So I feel a bit safer. Especially now that I’ve found the included creepy images, so you can be freaked out as well.
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Permalink: http://www.wide-eyed.org/main/article/hairy_brown_spider/
Comments
- On 06/07/2007, Dan says:
I found one of these bastards in the stairway a while back in Okinawa. Scared the bejesus out of me. In Canada the biggest bug you ever find is less than an inch (2cm).
Now that I know it’s just a huntsman, next time I’ll just wince and if need be, throw large heavy items at it from afar, rather than fleeing down the street screaming like a little school girl.
Sincerely,
Dan - On 07/15/2007, says:
Well that thing would scare me too. And I’m not scared of spiders at all.
Check out this one then!:
http://applematters.com/images/uploads/camelspider.JPG
Camel Spider.
- On 08/20/2007, says:
mm, i’m glad yr all freaked out by them, as despite (or perhaps because of) my excessive exposure to them, i’m utterly terrified of them!
in australia, where i live, they are common, particularly in summer in houses surrounded by lots of trees…
i wish i could say that i was all tough and hardened by them, but ohhh my… not!!! i’ve had one fall onto my bare skin (decolletage) from the clothes line one summer, another run up my left arm and across my chest and down my right arm in the car…
i’ve sucked one up in the vacuum cleaner and (ok, this scores points for dumb, but shh!) put talc powder on the floor to suck up into the vacuum cleaner (all right, shh! i thought it would suffocate the damn thing and i didn’t have anything else! and i sure didn’t want it crawling back out the vacuum in the morning)… yet in the morning this horrible ghostly white huntsman was slowly creeping over my carpet! *shiver*
my mother has had one on her steering wheel whilst driving (the car ones are total screamers; talk about feeling trapped!) AND it raised it’s fangs at her!! (now that’s unusual, as they’re not aggressive; despite instilling terror in many bipeds, they’re actually really harmless and can keep away other unwanted insects… but tell that to the woman frantically brushing one off her chest!!)
i’ve had another run down the broom handle i was using to try and remove it; blech, that was scary!
one that i squished when i was a teenager had lime green guts that TOTALLY freaked me out! (i still don’t get that!!)
mm, is that enough stories for now?!! (what the HELL was noah thinking when he chose two huntsies?!!!
)
- On 08/23/2007, Alnisa Allgood says:
First off, Amie, you really need to place a warning on that image. No big, ugly, scary close-ups of spiders, without a warning. You had me thanking god, that I had already put my soda down and only had a pen in my hand. Because I promptly dropped it on my keyboard when that image loaded.
Funkyspirit-Siders just freak me. I stand in awe of people who can really love bugs and insects. Because, it’s just not in me. I can love butterflies, and I can leave things like ants and centipedes alone (even though centipedes and millipedes still jar me). But spiders just bring out that instinctive kill or be killed instinct.
I’m running but stomping down at the same time; just a well placed crawl from screaming like a little girl.
- On 09/03/2007, says:
i love spiders but even the big ones make me flinch i jus found what looks like either a wolf spider or sumthin in my bath room im trying to capture it but it keeps hiding in the landry…
- On 09/16/2007, says:
l’m in my first year of high school. l love huntsmans and other scary stuff like bats, mice, snakes, ect.usely l would let the huntsman be if it was in the house but if it was in my room l would get my mum to kill it, because it’s to sad to see an inersent thing get killed.
one night l was going to the toilet, l closed the toilet door and behind was a huntsman. because l didn’t want to wake my mum up and l didn’t want it to die, l went to get a jar, and brought it to school the next day to freak the normal kids out. the people were amazed that l caught a huntsman and that l was not afaid of it. when l fed it all the other students stayed well back from the jar and some of them screemed even tho the lid was not off let, l just looked at them like they were from another planet, and they looked at me in the same way. l named the spider george and kept it as a pet.
my friends friend found a baby huntsman at a farm and brought it back home in her pocket. it grew to about the size of when u put your left thumb and finger and your other thumb and finger together. she first fed it with a glove on her hand, then she could feed it with her bare hands. after about two years it turned out to be a mrs huntsman, had babies and died.
l have started collecting huntsmans, and have three at the moment, george, a baby of george’s species about as big as my thumb nail, and an huntsman not of george’s species and bigger than the baby but smaller than george. george lives in my old herment crab tank that l filled up with soil and moss. the others live in jars at the moment. right now l have george with his tank next to me on a chair, and the others in their jars on my lap, eating their moths.
the baby huntsman has only 4 legs on one side and none on the other. can somone tell me if they will grow back?
- On 09/16/2007, says:
Hey
This is Fake.On 07/15/2007, Amie says:
Well that thing would scare me too. And I’m not scared of spiders at all.Check out this one then!:
http://applematters.com/images/uploads/camelspider.JPG
Camel Spider.
The picture has 10 legs, and therefore is not a spider.
- On 09/21/2007, Alnisa Allgood says:
Okay, I had to check, because when you said fake, my first thought was that it was a photoshop fake, then I thought that would just be mean. But after very little research, I came to understand you meant that the spider isn’t a true spider. Like my, preferred ‘Daddy Long-Legs’, the Camel Spider isn’t really a spider, but they are still arachnids.
Though get this, they eat flesh. Yeck! Yeck! and Yeck. Please stay in the desert in which you came from. These ‘spiders’ can be huge!! I won’t traumatize you all with the picture of one on a soldiers leg, as it is I’m still awake, looking over my shoulder, and I live in the midwest—nary a desert in sight.
- On 02/07/2008, Okinawa says:
The Bananna Spiders in Okinawa are huge! I almost ran into two of them in Bise.
- On 08/07/2008, says:
i was going to the bathroom and seen the bigass thing on a crack in the wall it was about as big as a fishing sting top and is quick like a mother f@#@!$ i tried hitting it with a shoe but it seen the shoe and ran out the way…
the spider was brown and its legs were about 2 inches long and looked as if they were tan…
- On 08/07/2008, says:
i just went to some other web sites and it is a huntsman spider. the huntsman is non-agresive,its venom is non-toxic to humans and a large huntsman can give a painful bite…
they are known to be quick and often wander into homes but like to live out side under flat rocks,on the eve of a house,and under your bed! just kidding;)
