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Warning: Arachnophobes Look Away!


Dxenion
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As others have said, white tails and red backs are quickly dispatched here, especially if they are near the dogs. The others are no problem. I quite like huntsman, but would prefer if they could stay out of the car and not crawl out of the air vent or run across the roof above my head!

Yes Its weird how they seem to gravitate to cars. I quite like spiders, far cheaper for eliminating mozzies and flies than oodles of cans of fly spray.

But I tend to draw the line when the huntsman decides to come out of hiding and fall into my lap while driving.......uuuuuuuuuuuggggggg

no i didnt jump out of the car. He/she had the decency to scoot back into hiding.

Although I will never ever forget the day i was a passenger in a friends car when she opened the drivers door and jumped out leaving me and car to roll down the driveway of the property we had just been about to leave.

thank god it stoped safely, will ever wonder if she would do the same thing at 60 k ?

N no never accepted an offer to go with her again anywhere if she was driving.

Lol, wouldn't drive with her again!

I remember on a camping trip many years ago, a group of us were sitting around the fire one night, and a young Japanese tourist was sitting opposite. The poor girl was unaware that she had a rather large huntsman perched on top of her head. A couple of people tried to flick it off without alerting her, but then she realised what was happening and the spider went flying off when she screamed. She did recover and laugh about it afterwards!

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A forum member lost her 3 year old Cavalier King Charles Spaniel to a spider bite yesterday. :cry:

It is really sad. It also shows why I was prepared to go to extreme lengths to identify this one. I have four dogs here and I can't fence off the entire back yard because the burrows are everywhere.

I don't think there is anyway of really protecting your dog from a potential spider bite. :(

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And the winners of the 'What spider is that?' competition are LappieHappy, Kayla1 and Weasels.

The Australian Museum and the Victorian Museum have confirmed the mystery spider as a Stanwellia grisea - Melbourne Trapdoor Spider

Thank you to everyone who participated in this thread. It was an educational and hair raising experience!

Ooh, I only just saw this - is there a prize? :rofl:

Lol, yes - a free Melbourne Trapdoor Spider. Just PM me your address and I'll send it off in the morning.

I live in Melbourne, so I've probably already got one around somewhere :laugh: :thumbsup:

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A forum member lost her 3 year old Cavalier King Charles Spaniel to a spider bite yesterday. :cry:

That is very sad. I'm glad there is a forum like this where people can pick the brains of others to find out about what's best for our dogs, but sadly sometimes awful things happen no matter what we do :(

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Can someone explain to me what is so awful about spiders. OK. Some of them bite and are poisonous, but most are harmless and prey on obnoxious insects. It's pretty easy to learn which are dangerous in your area. (I am female, but don't get it. Why are girls so upset by creepy-crawlies . . . and mice?).

I don't mind mice, snakes etc and am not what you would call a girly girl in that sense, I used to keep mice and rats etc but spiders...:eek:

I will try and answer your question from my perspective. Everything about them creeps me out, their hairy spindly legs, the way they move, the fact they can bite, some can be life threatening, the mere thought of one makes me physcially shudder. I have nightmares about them, have trouble looking at pictures of them, quite regularly inspect areas inside before going into them to make sure there are none there and if I get one on me I become absolutely hysterical. It's out of my control.:shrug: And pretty funny for anyone watching :laugh: :laugh:

I could have written the above! I've had pet mice and rats, love non-venomous snakes, cockroaches are fine so long as they don't run up your leg but spiders just give me the heebie jeebies. I have come to accept and even admire golden orb spiders (they tend to not move, and when they do, move slowly) but I still can't walk under one that is sitting in its web. I have also come to quite like the little jumping spiders and I tolerate daddy long legs most of the time.

Huntsmans are another story. I KNOW they are harmless but when one is on the wall above the door of the bathroom, yes I will wonder if I can squeeze out of the 20cm x 30cm window rather than have to exit through the door, and it will take me about an hour before I can get up the nerve to bolt as fast as I can while doing a fair impersonation of Quasimodo as I try to crouch and run at the same time below said creature, and then do a stupid dance of ickiness and relief at having survived the experience afterwards. There is no rhyme or reason to it, it just is. I do have a vast collection of funny scary spidey stories though, and am I the only one to read this whole thread without looking at a single picture?

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A forum member lost her 3 year old Cavalier King Charles Spaniel to a spider bite yesterday. :cry:

:cry: How very sad. Especially such a youngster.

Do they know what sort of spider?

I worry about the necrotising fasciitis that can follow a spider bite. A friend's lab had 3 bites along his side - lost a huge amount of skin and tissue around each site - you couild see the underlying structures in places before he started to heal. :eek: They had to debride the wounds regularly - he was such a good patient boy - and did eventually heal and nearly all the fur grew back, but it took about a year. Another friend's Sheltie had a problem with a bite on the face, but luckily that didn't get as bad, or take so long - still a couple of months though.

I'm hoping I have some good spider karma, as I rescued a Huntsman from another spider's web on one of my windows this morning - though I must admit I did it with a soft broom. Hope he/she's OK - was moving when I put it on the ground.

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You should have seen the dance my son did after sitting on a snake. :laugh:

Yikes! What kind of snake?

Probably a similar dance to the one I did when a large wolf spider leapt off the top of the verandah post while attempting to make its web, and got blown by the wind straight into my face, where it promptly freaked out and ran down my arm, but not nearly as much as I freaked out! :eek:

Jerojath, it's usually referred to by those in the know as 'the spider dance'. Arachnophobes do it when a spider has jumped on them, or sometimes just after being in a situation where one might have jumped on them, but didn't. Almost everyone, arachnophobe or not, does it when they walk face first into a spider web, particularly if there is a large spider in the middle of the web that then runs 'somewhere' and you're not quite sure if that somewhere is up your shirt sleeve or down the neck of your top, or whether you have managed to shake the spider off. The spider dance usually involves a disjointed flicking of the limbs, shaking of the head and body, general random flailing of arms, with the odd involuntary shudder and usually some form of head or facial twitch.

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You should have seen the dance my son did after sitting on a snake. :laugh:

Yikes! What kind of snake?

Probably just a Green Tree Snake. But he didn't know that at the time - it was pitch black out there.

Jerojath, it's usually referred to by those in the know as 'the spider dance'.

Bit like the "toad dance" our sons' friends used to do when DH used to take them out toad hunting at night. :D

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I think I win at the pathetic, girly spider fear - once when I was 19 I called my mum in hysterics to help me, as I had a huntsman type spider the size of a dinnerplate crawl through my window and I was about to burn the place down to get rid of it. She didn't live nearby so couldn't help, so she called the fire brigade. They were very helpful - 6 men in full firefighting gear, chasing a spider round my floor (they knocked it off the wall!)

:bolt:

Anyway, all this spider talks makes me want to know what the best spider sprays are that are sort of dog safe?

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Talking about snakes. I'll never forget when I was about 12 and we lived in a country house with an old outside dunny can. Mum went in there and about 2 minutes later came running out with her pants down and a magazine in her hand, there she is running down towards the house trying to pull up her pants but for some reason not letting go of the magazine. Apparently a red bellied black snake had made it's home in the crack between the wall and the concrete and it came out to say hi. She called the SES to come get it and was like "I was on the toilet and it just appeared" They nicely came and took it away.

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my dad never lived down asking my uncle to catch the 'lizard' living beside the bush tiolet. it had popped its head out every time dad was on the throne of meditation and despite many near misses over the two weeks we had been visiting over chrismas he had never succeeded in catching it.

next day uncle phoned, he had 'caught' dads lizard. a 7 foot tiger snake :eek:

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