What is worse than.....

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Steve Maskery

Established Member
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26 Apr 2004
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Kirkby-in-Ashfield
... Finding a spider in the bath just as you are about to get in?
Answer: Finding one just as you get out. Goodness knows how he got there, I think I would have noticed when i turned on the taps.
Fortunately he was a little one. At the bottom of the garden I appear to have a colony of the WBS (world's biggest spiders).
S
 
Possibly.............. finding a snake lying next to where you had just been concreting round a drain after you return to it and thinking "was that there all the time? or has it just crawled out from under the house?"

fortunately it was very dozy (woke it up I guess), not venomous and I was able to move it (with a 2.5m pitchfork!)
 
My grandfather picked up his alarm clock (one of the old round ones with a bell on top) in the darkness one winter morning only to find it wasn't his clock, it was a bat. According to my gran he just looked at it, walked across to the window, dropped it out and went back to sleep as if it were completely normal.
 
And to cap it all, tonight I found a lump in my wine. I spat it out and it was a fly. A huge fly and it was still alive! Yuk! I had to have a whisky just to sterilise my mouth. Horrible (the fly, that is, not the whisky).
S
 
Scout camp, Windsor Great Park, circa 1973: Woke up around 4am as it was light (this time of year).

Had been lying on my back. Realised I was staring eye to eye with a large green frog sitting on my chest. Picked him up, put him outside, dozed off again.

I'm sure it wasn't a joke by another scout - nobody else was awake, I'm sure, and we were camped close to a large pond.
 
Pokhara, Nepal,1986: Living in a thatched hut with bars but no glass in the windows.

Popular spot for large spiny caterpillars that caused huge irritation if you touched them and the spines went into the skin. They used to drop out of the thatch onto the concrete floor (you'd hear a soggy "thwack" in the middle of the night), or on top of the mosquito net.

Got back late one evening to find one in the middle of the floor. Didn't want to try to move it, and REALLY didn't want it to end up by the bed in case I trod on it. For some stupid reason decided to drown it, so poured a glass of water over it and went to bed.

Following morning, overslept. Got up in a rush (was going to be late for the office), and grabbed the first pair of dried underpants off the middle of the line (stretched window-to-window across the room). Felt a really damp patch on my behind, instinctively put my hand down to see what it was...

... and squashed aforementioned caterpillar into my bottom.

Bloomin' marvellous.
 
Being a woos and hating spiders , I sort of cry and go all girly .
I was on a caving trip on the mendips and entered a cave via a tight squeeze , got about 20 metres in and noticed a lot of very big cave spiders , meta manardi to be precise . Thought borlicks to this , went to leave and then realised that the whole tunnel entrance was brimming with them .

Oh how I cried , blubbered , cried , blubbered and then proved that humans can travel at warp speed , I still have the bruises to prove it !

Ta ta
 
I left my trainers on their side when camping in Rainy Scotland many years ago, fortunately the frog who decided that that would be a good place to sleep overnight jumped out just as my foot was going in in the morning! I still don't want to think about what would have happened if he hadn't!
 
weta.jpeg

These are what make my 'nads shrivel. They would qualify as members of the forum as they love wood - the more rotten the better. They're called wetas and our wood pile supports a healthy colony.
My granddaughter (15) picks them up with impunity and chases her screaming mother around the garden with them. :lol:
 

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wellywood":1mqzos29 said:

These are what make my 'nads shrivel. They would qualify as members of the forum as they love wood - the more rotten the better. They're called wetas and our wood pile supports a healthy colony.
My granddaughter (15) picks them up with impunity and chases her screaming mother around the garden with them. :lol:
I had one of those hop out of the shrubbery and onto my shoulder. Don't mind admitting I screamed like a girly.
 
It's just a barb to deter would-be predators like our cats :). They don't have a sting but they can bite - not very hard - and the barbs on their legs which they use for clinging to wood can hurt. Other than that, they're harmless and rely on their ugliness to frighten enemies. Not unlike me come to think of it :roll:
 
wellywood":3creouvi said:

These are what make my 'nads shrivel. They would qualify as members of the forum as they love wood - the more rotten the better. They're called wetas and our wood pile supports a healthy colony.
My granddaughter (15) picks them up with impunity and chases her screaming mother around the garden with them. :lol:

Google tells me that your wood-pile is ~11,751 miles from me - having learned what lives there I'm not sure that's far enough... :shock:
 
KevM":16be55im said:
Google tells me that your wood-pile is ~11,751 miles from me - having learned what lives there I'm not sure that's far enough... :shock:

Not far enough! How do you think I feel..? Especially as winter's setting in and we have the wood burner lit most evenings and it's me who fetches the logs. :lol:
 
wellywood":wtneqgde said:
KevM":wtneqgde said:
Google tells me that your wood-pile is ~11,751 miles from me - having learned what lives there I'm not sure that's far enough... :shock:

Not far enough! How do you think I feel..? Especially as winter's setting in and we have the wood burner lit most evenings and it's me who fetches the logs. :lol:

I think I might invest in a nice New Zealand lambswool sweater, bobble-hat, scarf and mitts...
 
I woke up one morning to find a dead pigeon next to my bed, it had fallen down the chimney. Not the thing I wanted to see at 04:30 in the morning. The only positive thing I could think of was at least it was fresh and hadn't been up the chimney for a few weeks before falling.
 
Back to spiders - now I know they are probably more scared of us than we are of them considering the size difference (assuming spiders feel anything), but the big ones still give me a shiver. However I don't have an urge to splat them because they do catch flies etc and I really hate flies, so I bought a spider catcher - sort of plastic stick with soft bristles about 4 inches long that close gently around the fearsome creatures and allow you to deposit them outside (ready to climb back in I suppose). Kinder though.

K
 
Normally I don't mind snakes... Except I dislike it intensely if they join me in the swimming pool.

There is something sinister about being face to face with one.
 
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