Spiders

We have spiders.

Like other people have … something you’ve got a lot of all over your house.

To sleep at night, I don’t count sheep. I count spiders. And I’m usually asleep before I have to start imagining them.

A couple of days ago I woke up with two tiny spider-bites on my shoulder (you can tell they’re spider-bites, they come in very closely-spaced pairs and stay slightly inflamed for ages). I deliberately put my bed in the middle of the room, away from all the walls, to avoid that sort of thing, but some poor little sucker must have gone abseiling from the light fitting and gotten rolled on for his troubles. (I’m not kidding about the bed, or about the numbers. It’s a choice: an open window and spiders, or a slow death by asphyxiation. And I don’t really mind spiders.)

And this morning as I was leaving, there was a spider hanging casually in midair, a good two metres on each side away from the nearest building. God only knows how, but she’d built a web across the four-metre gap between the house and the bikeshed, so fine that it’s only visible when you look at it sideways, and there she was with white stripey legs and all, waiting for breakfast.

(By the magic of Google Image Search: a photo taken by Else Kramer would seem to be the same kind of spider.)

Comments

Sep 26, 2006 at 11:09 • tikitu (Spontson Borealis)

Hm, hadn't noticed that the indoor ones were any different. I'll check it out when I get home (haven't seen nearly so many inside lately anyway -- colder weather maybe?).

Sep 26, 2006 at 07:09 • Spontson Australis

Ah, spiders. The striped legs probably indicate Araneus diadematus (European garden spider)-- very pretty, and very elegant webs. I'd be surprised if they were coming indoors though. Are your indoor companions similar in appearance? I'd be interested to know what your assailant was; perhaps a Tegenaria, the males of which tend to be out nocturnally on the razzle around this time of year. I've never seen one abseil, though. Haven't met many spiders in Dunedin, except for a white-tail which crawled out of a rivet gun I was using last summer.

Sep 11, 2006 at 14:09 • tikitu

There's a big difference between spiders capable of biting and the ones you really don't want to bite you... Also, they're not naturally agressive (like wasps) and they don't tend to fly into your hair (like bees and so on) so you're usually safe. I don't honestly know how many of the mosquitoes they really catch though -- and those that do I guess they often only get *after* they've done their nasty little sucking thing. (Extra protein for spidey but extra annoying for me.)

Sep 9, 2006 at 20:09 • jacob

Spiders are real cute. However I don't recall ever being bitten by one. If asked, I would say the Netherlands have no indigenous spiders capable of biting humans. Of course this is just some belief of mine I cannot justify. I guess you could argue that if you have enough spiders in your room it becomes unlikely that there are any other arthropods around to bite you.

Sep 18, 2006 at 09:09 • tikitu

You've got a garden? Dutch freaky: that's rich, coming from Mr. how-many-cases-in-Polish? ^_^

Sep 16, 2006 at 18:09 • szopa

Heh... We just moved into our studio in Leuven and guess what... Yes we've got spiders. Lots of spiders. And they are big. And anoying -- the garden is hardly accessible due to their nets. I think that spiders may be considered *the* natural enemies of foreign students in the Low Countries. And, yes, Dutch is a bit freaky.

Sep 19, 2006 at 00:09 • szopa

Well, it's small and full of spiders, but it's still a garden. I hope that eventually we will be able to organize barbeques and so on (at the moment we don't know anyone and aren't quite sure where to buy a bbq device, no to mention coal -- and are too afraid to ask ^_^). (Oh, and right at this very moment a *very* *very* disgusting snail sneaked from the garden into the flat... I didn't know we had some of those. It's good that it wasn't Julka the first person to observe the bug...) Dutch: well, how can it be that for a week in this country no one has mannaged to explain me how should I read the names of the streets? It's not so funny when you say where you live and people first don't understand for a second and then start to laugh. ^_^