/oblig

The spider, whose body is bigger than a five pence coin...

One store worker said: 'It was a very scary big spider....'


"Whoa! That's farking huge!!"

As this is the DM I'm going to bet that the spider was:

1 - black; and
2 - an immigrant.

(checks article)

Yep.

miss diminutive: [i.dailymail.co.uk image 468x663][teach.valdosta.edu image 326x480]

Spike from Notting Hill, is that you?

Martina, is that you?

Cheesehead_Dave: [www.smashinglists.com image 640x424]

What the HELL is that...

Darth Nastyperson: Lucky it wasn't one of these:

[img.photobucket.com image 600x620]

Link

Meh, redbacks--aka the Australian black widow (which are probably the LEAST venomous spiders in Australia)--it's my understanding they tend to be dangerous just because they have the annoying tendency to end up in places where they can be easily squished or sat on like toilet seats. (Compared to OTHER medically significant spiders in Australia like funnelwebs, redbacks are relatively mild--it won't kill you if you're relatively healthy, just make you bletcherously ill. And yes, black widow antivenom works for redbacks and vice versa if you're one of those unfortunate people who has a REALLY bad reaction to the venom.)

/STILL would rather be bit by a black widow or redback than a farking brown recluse
//AT LEAST THEY HAVE ANTIVENOM FOR BLACK WIDOWS AND REDBACKS, which is a hell of a lot more than you can say for brown recluses...no antivenom exists, and even if there WAS an antivenom you'd have to get it within twelve hours of being bitten or prepare to have bits of your flesh dying and sloughing off a la cutaneous anthrax times a million

Natsumi: Cheesehead_Dave: [www.smashinglists.com image 640x424]

What the HELL is that...

Looks like some sort of "camel spider" (not a spider at all, and completely harmless to people)--usually you see perspective-tweaked-with pics of the bigger camel spiders from the Middle East (that soldiers post to generate High Octane Nightmare Fuel), but most of them are about that size.

Darth Nastyperson: Lucky it wasn't one of these:

[img.photobucket.com image 600x620]

Link

Okay, dude. I swear I saw one of those the other week. Only that, I'm in North Carolina. But the red was definitely on the back of the abdomen. Just a word to Australia. Any dangerous farked up species of spiders, snakes, drop bears or what-not is found over here and it WILL be considered an act of war. You just keep that shiat to yourselves, you got that, freak!

mortimer_ford: Darth Nastyperson: Lucky it wasn't one of these:

[img.photobucket.com image 600x620]

Link

Okay, dude. I swear I saw one of those the other week. Only that, I'm in North Carolina. But the red was definitely on the back of the abdomen. Just a word to Australia. Any dangerous farked up species of spiders, snakes, drop bears or what-not is found over here and it WILL be considered an act of war. You just keep that shiat to yourselves, you got that, freak!

Black widows don't always have the proper "hourglass"--I've seen 'em that did look remarkably like redbacks (not too shocking because a redback IS an Australian black widow, seriously---widows are the most medically significant American spider, and mostly a common cause of envenomation in Australia but relatively minor compared to the other medically significant spiders in Oz because Australia is a friggin' Death Continent). I've actually heard the Southeastern species do tend to sometimes have stripes rather than the "classic hourglass".

(Yes, for folks unaware--there are actually at least two and closer to three distinct species of black widow in the US.)

Fusorfodder: When I was 14, I was bitten in the back by a brown recluse spider. It felt like I had pulled every single muscle in my back, aaaand you would not believe just how your back is incorporated in every single damn movement. I found out from my parents over 15 years later that I had the full on necrosis going and that they never told me about it so I wouldn't worry. Fark spiders. "Ooooh but they catch pests!" No, fark you, they ARE pests. Being higher on the food chain than one pest does not absolve a spider of being a bigger douchebag of a pest.

Agreed. I was 19 when I was bitten on the ankle by a brown recluse. They are nasty buggers.

IBrowse,

That one there, a female, is just warning you of the red back (black widow type) sitting on the toilet seat. Have a good day.

I have a garden full of these. How do I know? I took each one out of my house and placed it there.