Force talked about phoboas, and right then I saw a spider, yes, it is true, I live in Africa and am afraid to death of spiders. Chesby, is it true that spiders in Aus is even worse than here? Al of you, tell me of the criters that live in your parts of the world

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"A good head and a good heart are always a formidable combination."
"I detest racialism, because I regard it as a barbaric thing, whether it comes from a black man or a white man. "
"I dream of an Africa which is in peace with itself."
"If there are dreams about a beautiful South Africa, there are also roads that lead to their goal. Two of these roads could be named Goodness and Forgiveness. "

Nelson Mandela

A new thread was inadvertently started.

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"Some people complain about the system. The system is not good, so they can't do anything. It's an excuse. Freedom is in your heart." (Jin Xing)

I do not know how it happend, but I do have a broken brain you know

But it should be fixed now. This is now a post on phobias, and the other one moved to the right place, and made more amusing with one little adition!!!


AH

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"A good head and a good heart are always a formidable combination."
"I detest racialism, because I regard it as a barbaric thing, whether it comes from a black man or a white man. "
"I dream of an Africa which is in peace with itself."
"If there are dreams about a beautiful South Africa, there are also roads that lead to their goal. Two of these roads could be named Goodness and Forgiveness. "

Nelson Mandela

It's an easy mistake to make. The "new topic" and "post reply" icons look alike and are side-by-side.

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"Some people complain about the system. The system is not good, so they can't do anything. It's an excuse. Freedom is in your heart." (Jin Xing)

Strange, never noticed that......makes me wonder how many times I've done it!!!!


hehehe

Thanks Force!

AH

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"A good head and a good heart are always a formidable combination."
"I detest racialism, because I regard it as a barbaric thing, whether it comes from a black man or a white man. "
"I dream of an Africa which is in peace with itself."
"If there are dreams about a beautiful South Africa, there are also roads that lead to their goal. Two of these roads could be named Goodness and Forgiveness. "

Nelson Mandela

I hate spiders too. Thankfully I live in Michigan where we have winters... which I hate... but they have the effect of killing bugs before they get too big. We do have hideous garden spiders, but at least no tarantulas like down to the southwest...
I've also heard of some kind of huge ugly hairy spider that crawls on sugarcane down south.
Any arachnid you need a firearm to kill... I'm glad we don't have them up here.

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"Man lives in the sunlit world of that which he believes to be reality. But unseen by most is an underworld, a place that is just as real... but not as brightly lit... A DARK SIDE!"
-opening from Tales From the Darkside

I don't hate spiders, but I am deathly afraid of them - not bad enough to call it a genuine phobia, but bad enough that once I didn't go out the back of my house for three weeks because I knew there was a spider under the outdoor table. That's a true story.

Actually, they kind of fascinate me - and I think that they have an incredibly important role ecologically. I can look at them if they're perfectly still, but the minute they start to move, I get nauseated and cold and sweaty, and I can't keep watching at all.

I can't kill anything, so if there's one in the house I'll find a way to keep it where it is until Max can take care of putting it outside for me. Plus, I'm not going to end a life just because it happened to end up in my house and I'm scared of it. It's one hundredth of my size, for goodness' sake, and probably a lot more scared of me than I am of it.

Unfortunately, my fear is paralyzing, so when I see a spider it takes me a good half an hour at least to work up the courage to try and trap it, and then a great deal of skin-crawling, hand-shaking maneouvering to actually get close enough to try and keep it where it is. Makes me nauseated just thinking about it!

And yes, Australia has a large number of venomous spiders (along with snakes and jellyfish and a great deal of other nasties), including the redback, the funnel-web and the white-tail. Funnel-webs are only found in NSW but certainly are found in homes there, but everyone has redbacks and white-tails in their home or garden - white-tails are often found in beds. I've found one in mine lots of times.

Oh, and an Australian summer staple (although they sometimes come out in winter) are the huge Hunstman spiders that like to hang out at the very top of your wall near the ceiling, and you don't notice them until you happen to look in that direction, and there's a large hairy spider the size of your hand span just sitting there immobile, and they're so massive you're too scared to move, but you know if you leave it there you'll come out the next morning and it will be gone, and then you won't know where it is, so you have to try to trap it, because there's no shoe big enough and a whole can of flyspray doesn't do the trick (well, it does, but it takes a LONG time for them to die and then you have to stand on your table because they scurry around forever while they're doing it - plus it's such a cruel way to kill something). Their bite won't kill you, although it would give you a nasty wound, but they do like to jump, and when there's been one in my house I tend to not be able to go into the room it was in for some time afterwards. Eewwwwwwwwwww......

Just out of interest, here's a list of our Top 10 most deadly creatures.

1. The Box Jellyfish
2. Irukandji (A Jellyfish)
3. Salt Water Crocodile
4. Blue Ring Octopus
5. Stone Fish
6. Red Back Spider
7. Brown Snake
8. Tiger Snake
9. Great White Shark
10. Funnel Web Spider

Look some of them up - it's really creepy!!

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We've got rules and maps and guns in our backs, but we still can't just behave ourselves. Even if to save our own lives, we are a brutal kind. The Shins

....and as an addendum to my last very long post, I actually did kill a spider the other day. I went out the back and the dogs came racing out and started worrying quite a big spider that had been obviously sleeping in the back door jamb and had jumped out all dopey and awakened during it's natural sleeptime by my selfishly opening the door.

I didn't know what kind it was, and I couldn't risk one of them eating it or being bitten by it (or both) and my dogs are very big and still puppies so I couldn't keep them away from it long enough for me to be able to pick it up and put it over the fence, so I grabbed one of Max's runners and squished it. And then I felt guilty for an hour.

And when I told Max he was not happy with me because he knew it had been sleeping in the door jamb and it had kind of become his pet. So we both felt bad. There is a good chance that it was a baby Hunstman and may have soon ended up lurking up at the top of the bathroom wall near the ceiling, in which case had I seen it whilst taking a shower I may well have fainted, hit my head on the tap and bled to death. However, that potentiality aside, I hate killing things, I just hate it.

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We've got rules and maps and guns in our backs, but we still can't just behave ourselves. Even if to save our own lives, we are a brutal kind. The Shins

I'll kill anything trespassing in my house without feeling any guilt whatsoever.


Good grief!!!!!!!!! Please tell me you're only 3 years old - and small for your age!

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"Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves." ~Ronald Reagan

Haha...Brown Recluses, Scorpions, Black Widows, Rattlesnakes, Water Moccasins, pretty much every kind of vile creature in North America lives here...

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"Duty is the most sublime word in our language. You cannot do more. You should never wish to do less." - Robert E. Lee