I am ust on the ground LMBFAO! We call it the spider dance...and it;s when you go through a field and feel the crawly...but can;t find it! When I lived in KY, I would walk down the driveway at night...which was lined by pin oaks on eitehr side...and now and then one of thosw rusty colored barn spiders would have spun her little web...and I was dancing like a fool!

It's always funny when it happens to somebody else....but when it's me....creeps!

Glad you're OK! (I would have given a million to see it!)

First of all, you have a gift for writing and must do something with it, because you described this perfectly!!

I would simply die on the spot. Seriously. Heart attack. I shivered just thinking about it! I had one of those spiders in my yard once and the photographer in me MADE me take a picture, but then I called the neighbor kid so he could get it far away from my house. The thought of that thing on my face makes me pale.

What a great story, and you told it so well. I would have been mortified to say the least.

I have a sadistic side when it comes to horseflies....nothing brings me more satisfaction than to finally catch that big bluish-black sucker that's been circling my head and shoulders, tear off one wing, and then lovingly drop it into the waiting arms of a spider. Or a toad. You can actually hear them buzzing from within the toad after they get snapped up. The black-and-yellows are a favorite, though, because once they get so large they seem to become almost lethargic, going about the business of wrapping and biting so slowly that you can see their movements with better detail. Incidentally, it was the mental picture of those shining black chelicerae on such a large individual that was going through my brain yesterday.
Like, a little voice from atop my do-rag: "...hmmmm. Strange. This is like no other horsefly that I've ever seen, but it's in my web just the same. Time to see if it's biteable!"

OMG Im just cracking up here. But I must say that my feet have come up off the floor and I am looking around for "incomming" spiders aaaarrrrggggg. I am so spider phobic (have no idea how to spell the long word) and this story is making my skin crawl. I WOULD have crashed !

dirtgirl,

Don't feel too badly about her web; from what I've read this species eats it web each evening and spins another before morning, (seems like an awful lot of work to me!).

Just last month I "rescued" a few Argiopes from my work place and took 'em home. My wife wasn't initially too happy about it, but she's grown to tolerate them. I even caught her taking one of her friends out to the garden to show one off. It turns out that it was a good thing that I took them when I did; just a few days later a pest service came and sprayed around the perimeter of the building. I went out at lunch and found a couple of females that I had left crumpled up and laying on the sidewalk...

Mike

OOOHHHH I dont like that ...as much as I just can't do spiders I always leave them outside, as a matter of fact you will all be proud of me ...I just took a resident laundry room spider outside instead of killing it.. MORE skin crawling....

lisa, I'm proud of you. Really, though....working to overcome a deeply-seated fear is no small thing and you did a WONDERFUL job.

Thanks, dirtgirl, for the best laugh I have had in months! Tears are still rolling down my face from laughing so hard. You most certainly do have a talent for writing!

I am quite fascinated with spiders and coexist very peacefully with them, both inside and out. One of my favorite things about fall is watching the spiders spin their webs, along with watching hubby do his 'flailing of the arms dance' when he walks into one!! :-)

and the ironic thing is that is just about any day now, the fall afternoons will be swarming with little ballooning baby spiderlings. And around here it is generally guaranteed that I will walk under a tree limb or something similar where they are just now dispersing and wind up with a head draped with scramblimg babies. At least that doesn't bother me. In fact, I really hate knowing that a few are going to get squashed even if I try to be careful helping them vacate premises. One year a spider stored her egg mass under the handle of my laundry basket, which I kept on a shelf above the washer and dryer. I was sorting things one day and reached in to press the start button and in doing so, leaned right into a solid wall of descending babies. Must have been like, F-Troop goes to rappelling school. And the first time I began to suspect something was up when I kept waving away what I thought was a gnat in front of my face. Only it would swing out and away in a slow graceful arc and then swing back in close, and I realized most gnats don't travel on a string. When I reached out and pinched off the tiny web and carried the spiderling over to a houseplant, I noticed more little gnats on strings appearing at various intervals in my peripheral vision. I realized what had happened, although it took some detective work on my part to track down the source since I had not been out yet that morning. By then my husband was dying laughing...his wife had spiders in her hair. It does conjure up images of aproned housewives dancing on kitchen chairs while a mouse runs around her feet, or a bat diving into a beehive hairdo on some FarSide matron.
He doesn't know how lucky he is to have a woman like me.

Amazing. Ya know I am not afraid of mice or snakes (have actually had a few of each as pets) I don't like some bugs, but I take them outside if one gets in my house, but SPIDERS IN MY HAIR !!!! I would SURLY pass out. Not long ago one went running across my arm while I was in bed and at the Just ready to drift off stage. I shot up out of that bed so fast you would have thought the house was on fire. I did not see where the spider went, pull back all the covers, looked under the bed...no spider anywhere. I had to go sleep in the guest room. The next morning all the bedding was washed and a good dust and vacuming got done....it needed it anyway. ;)
Lisa