Letting Your Fears In

[Mr_Pleasington]

Okay, I'm a big guy.  Six one, two fifty, and I can bench over three hundred (or I could a while back).  Heck, I was captain of the football team way back in high school.  I'm a brute.  

And you know what freaks me out...spiders!

Man, I hate spiders.

I live in Missouri, popular resort of the Brown Recluse.  Small, quiet, and immune to most treatments because the insidious little buggers have no nerves in their feet.  Their bite isn't fatal, but you'd wish it was as it causes skin to slough off.  

So, since its cool out, I opened the apartment up last night and turned the air off.  A few hours later I noticed a large number of bugs in the house...moths, gnats, etc.  So I went and patched the holes in my screen with tape.  There I was later, shoeless in my PJs getting ready for bed, when I notice a huge spider on the floor while brushing my teeth.  Freaked me out!  So I got a flyswatter and killed it.  I was curious if he brought friends with him.

So I get home today and there are two spiders on one of my windows, three on another. Some big some small.  I manage to kill them with ease but I fear for the ones I can't see.  

The ones under my pillows or in my shoe.

God, I hate spiders.

[Fellfrosch]

We had hobo spiders (the western cousin of the brown recluse) in our old house. It was the main reason we moved, since my wife was about to give birth and didn't want any spiders to help raise the baby. Our new place is blissfully free of them.

[Lieutenant Kije]

I don't mind spiders as much as other insects ingeneral.  With spiders I know what I'm getting: big abdomen (or thorax, or whatever that butt-part is called,) teeny head, eight legs, and a web.  Other insects offer a variety of horror that my imagination could have a heyday with.  For example, is this a bug that will burrow into your ear and eat you from the inside out, or is it one that has a stinger in back thorugh which it lays eggs underneath your skin.  Yuck!  Each of the Indiana Jones movies has a room swarming with something, but in my opinion Temple of Doom is the creepiest that way.

[JP Dogberry]

Yeah, I'm not a fan of spiders myself. Recently, an aquaintance was storing his record collection in my garage. Unfortunately, several huntsman decided to come along for the ride. After killing two, I told him to remove the records, or I would burn them.

I still look on all sides of the room before entering it.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

Yeah, we got spiders. I don't like 'em, but they don't bother me as much as, like Kije, the bugs I can't identify. They bug my wife though. (heh)

I think  spider-raised child would be cool. Would they pick up abilities? or just skills?

[42]

Spiders don't bother me that much. When I was in High School, a few spiders layed their eggs underneath my bedroom window. One day I noticed that not much light was getting into my room. When I pulled up the blinds the entire window was crawling with baby spiders. It was pretty cool I thought, but my parents went out and killed most of them anyways.

I think snakes freak me out more. My older brother always kept reptiles around (In hind site, this should have been a clue to my parents that he would become a future professor of reptile studies). I can capture and hold snakes. I use to hunt for them when I was a kid. However, almost every night after I've seen a snake, I wake up with nightmares involving snakes.

I also have nightmares about people. I think it's for simular reasons.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

I think I'm going to start having nightmares about YOU.

[Spriggan]

But Hobos unlike the brown reculse are very poisonious.  I hate spiders too.  But I've never been too bugged by wolf spiders which are every where in Nebraska (and the midwest) .  We had ones that were the size of my hand in our yard, true most was their legs but they were huge.

[Lieutenant Kije]

I saw a black widow once, in Argentina.  It was actually pretty cool.  I wasn't too freaked about it because a) it was miles from my apartment, and b) I wasn't about to go sticking my hand too close to it.  

I used to see little fuzzy baby spiders that were black and had little red spots when I lived in Kansas, but was told those weren't real black widows,  This one in Argentina, though, was all black and sleek and the hourglass was there, and she looked wicked.  As in wicked cool.  

Seeing black widows is probably something that happens to people all the time, but it was the only time I'd ever seen one.

[Spriggan]

they're realy common in this part of the US (Utah, Idaho).  You won't see many around the populated parts but go out to the rural areas and you'll find them prety easly.

[Gemm: Rock & Roll Star; Born to Rock]

I'm afraid of a few things. Not a lot.

Things like heights. I hate heights. Dunno why, just do. I get this bad feeling and then just wait for my mind to blow up so I can stop thinking about it.

Then there's new people. I'm not so much afraid as I am very passive about saying 'Hi' or starting any real lively conversation. Unless I have to.

Bugs/insects in general freak me out. I see a spider, I kill it. I see a bug, I kill it. I hate bugs.

Girls scare me. I try to talk to them, then I just end up turning around and not doing anything. Ya, that sucks. Especially here on campus now. Out of that all guys high school and now this. Augh! Girls! Why must I be attracted to them, but not able to please myself and speak to them.

I can't think of anything else right now, but when I do I'll be sure to tell you.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

Things like heights. I hate heights. Dunno why, just do. I get this bad feeling and then just wait for my mind to blow up so I can stop thinking about it.

Ever get that feeling like you're going to lose control of your body and fling yourself off the precipice? Yeah, that's freaky.

Like the feeling I used to get around girls. (no, just kidding, that one IS just you).

Let me explain to you why my family is generally cautious around spiders (and my brother is terrified of them).

My brother served his mission in the Phillipines, and he claims (much of this relies on his "claims" but he screams like a little girl when he sees a spider - literally, I am NOT making any of this up - so I think there's at least a kernal of truth to this) .... anyway, I was saying, he claims to have seen spiders that ate birds. Spiders that built webs over streams to catch leaping fish. Which is pretty big. I mean, even if you're talking about a hummingbird, you're talking about something that's gonna have a body nearly as large as your fist, and then there's the LEGS <shiver>. These are spiders that you don't step on. More or less you have to use a baseball bat or some l33t kung fu skillz to get rid of.

Anyway, the REAL fear comes from an observation that seems to hold up whenever I pay attention to it. Whenever you kill a spider, the next spider invading your space is usually of larger size. My brother's theory is that the dying spider releases a sort of telepathic death knell that reveals his location when he dies, which attracts the attention of larger representatives of the spider type. Having seen Phillipino spiders, he hestitates (read, "is scared to the wetting point") to even kill the smallest spider.

Leastways, that's the way he explains it to me. The effect it has on me is that i just think of those bird-eating spiders of the Phillipines whenever I see an 8-legged arachnid. <shudder>

[EUOL]

You know what does it to me?  Sharks.  Especially Landsharks.  

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

Contrary to popular belief, the most dangerous animal is not the lion or tiger or even the elephant. The most dangerous animal is a shark riding on an elephant, just trampling and eating everything they see.

(Jack Handey)

[Mistress of Darkness]

Raid my children. It is all about a large, comforting can of Raid. My theory is that the spiders don't know they are dying from Raid until it's too late.

42, you probably wouldn't have nightmares about people if you hadn't hunted and captured them when you were a kid.