Bird:0 Spider:1

[JunkyII]

Spend some time in the woods on Ft Benning and you will find yourself some Black Widows.....nasty looking things but the snakes....o the snakes.......

[Treize69]

We had one in the range building at the prison I used to work at about 4 years ago that filled most of a paper plate (which is HUGE for upstate New York). I think it was a wolf spider. We walked into the classroom in the morning and there he was just curled up on the floor in front of the door. Guys thought he was dead until they nudged him with their toes, then he uncurled and reared up, then scurried out the door and down the hall.

So they caught him, trapped him between two paper plates and set him (with the plates held together) under a book on the training officers desk. He almost literally dropped dead when he picked up the book and it came running out- he actually ran out of the room and started hyperventilating so bad that we had to postpone the class and make sure he wasn't having a heart attack. If it'd been me, that service revolver he has to carry on the range would have been put to use- both on the monstrous 'nid and the sick pranksters.

He got the ringleader back a few weeks later with a dead rattler on his drivers seat though.

I've also seen those ones that look like giant brown recluses come out of the basement that are so big the cats and dog just back off and stare at it until either I kill it or it gets to where its going (usually out the front door, oddly enough).

Little ones don't bother me too bad, but the big ones scare the living bejesus out of me.

[Saurdaukar]

We had those in TX where I grew up, called them banana spiders, but I think technically they're golden orb weavers.  They get pretty damn big, make really strong webs between the trunks of trees.  Once, while playing outside with some friends, shooting bb guns at each other, I ran through a web while looking back over my shoulder and got one on my face.  I blacked my eye smacking it so hard and fast. 

I don't mind spiders at all, I think they're neat and they do eat lots of irritating insects.  But, I don't want the ON me.

They dont get as big, Im sure, but we have them in the Mid-Atlantic/Northeast, too.  Nowhere near as common as in Florida, though.

I'll spare you the Florida story, where I was first introduced to these wonderful spiders running through the woods at a camp ground outside Disneyworld, but the Pennsylvania story will make Banshee pass out.

Was doing some fly fishing with a buddy in a stream in northeastern Pennsylvania.  Current was strong, but not too bad... stream was roughly 100 feet across and probably 7-8 feet deep in the middle with the odd area near the shoreline where one could not stand.

Being the young, advernturous lads that we were, we had chest waders on and were in the stream.  How the hell else were we suppose to get dirty and catch fish, etc, etc?

Well, as I stood there, casting, only about 15 feet into the stream (water up to waiste), I lost my footing and the current took me.  You see, rocks under the water of streams like this serve as anchors for planetlife and end you being covered in slimy (read: slippery) algae.  Well, my boot didnt much care for the "slippery" part and off I went...

Obviously this was slightly troubling as I just happened (yay...) to be, according to my own legs, drifting into an area where I could not stand.  More troubling than this was the fact that the water, now over my chest line, was filling my waders, making me rather inefficient at the whole "floating" thing.  Still more troubling was that the tree I saw ahead, with a branch that appeared to be strong enough to latch onto, had some strange haze beneath it... covering a couple loose bush branches, etc, etc.

Now about 20 feet away from this low-slung tree on the bank, along with its viney bushes and strange, hazy-film thing, was a rather visible object in the middle of the curious... FORNICATE!  MASSIVE FORNICATING SPIDER!

With no ability to stop myself, brace against the current, swim with filled waders, etc, etc, I went straight into this diety-darned spider web and ended up covered in its web with the damned thing, which, so far as I could tell at that moment, was roughly the size of a small car (palm of hand, realisticly) crawling on the back of my neck.

Eventually, the current pushed me into an area where I could stand again, I scrambled onto the muddy shore and, to this day, I dont think that I could disrobe any faster for Jenna Jameson, herself.

[druski85]

Spiders are one of the few things with exoskeletons that are not dead on sight in my home.  Insects get squished, spiders I rescue and put outside because they prey on pests.

+1.  In the part of the northeast where I grew up, most spiders don't get very large (or poisonous) so I generally will leave them alone out of habit.  If they are eating the skeeters and horseflies, I'm happy.  That being said, we used to have a place up in Chaumont bay near Watertown NY and I would wake up with spider bites on my arms/legs.  I never once recall one still being on me when I awoke, but that would have bothered me a bit.  Of course there are exceptions, and these will usually get whacked with a sandal.  I have waged jihad against plenty of other insects in my day (especially in DC!), so I would consider my sandal accuracy to be quite high. 

Now snakes on the other hand, snakes I can live without. 

[CAP1]

+1.  In the part of the northeast where I grew up, most spiders don't get very large (or poisonous) so I generally will leave them alone out of habit.  If they are eating the skeeters and horseflies, I'm happy.  That being said, we used to have a place up in Chaumont bay near Watertown NY and I would wake up with spider bites on my arms/legs.  I never once recall one still being on me when I awoke, but that would have bothered me a bit.  Of course there are exceptions, and these will usually get whacked with a sandal.  I have waged jihad against plenty of other insects in my day (especially in DC!), so I would consider my sandal accuracy to be quite high. 

Now snakes on the other hand, snakes I can live without.  (Image removed from quote.)

all spiders are poisonous to a point........but they are also defensive, as opposed to offensive.

[druski85]

all spiders are poisonous to a point........but they are also defensive, as opposed to offensive.

Aye, hence why I said "very poisonous."  I agree though for the most part the difference is in behavior -- whether or not they will take on a human, as in Raptor's hilarious story.   

[PJ_Godzilla]

ya know? i'm not afraid of spiders....and i don;t like to kill em, 'cause they eat the annoying creatures.

put one that friggin big near me, and i'm shootin his ass!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You brought the argument up, then rejected it handily. Whenever anyone throws out that truth - spiders DO eat bugs, after all - I always say, great, by that token, maybe I'll just bring some Cobras in the house to make sure I never have a mouse or rat problem.

At a certain point, the solution becomes a problem.

[ChickenHawk]

What a bunch of arachnophobs.  When I was a kid growing up in Arkansas, we used to catch tarantulas with our hands and let them crawl all over us.

Once when the family was all watching TV in the living room, a tarantula crawled across the floor right in front of us.  My dad casually got up and gave it a good smack.  Instantly, hundreds of baby tarantulas that had been on her back crawled off and headed in every direction.  That’s about the time my mom started freaking out.

[allaire]

Sorry not really afraid of the common spiders just don't like the very nasty kinds.  Central Arkansas is also bad about roaches and black widows in the water meter boxes.  Working one day and reached into the lid to remove it from the box, I felt webs, and thought it was not a big deal.  Once I had the lid off it turned out to be a very big deal.  There were about 15 female and about 3 or 4 male black widows in the box. 

[Becinhu]

I have/had a pet black widow under one of the A/C units at work up on the roof.  Found her by accident since she made her web around the drain spout on the unit.  Told everyone she was off limits to be killed.  She's very secretive as I only get to see her legs normally...and the unfortunate male hanging in her web.

[maddafinga]

Nope, that photo was taken by an Aussie fellow on another forum I participate in.  The photo was taken in Australia.  While it might be a banana spider, it is definitely not a golden orb weaver.

Golden silk orb-weaver
 
Diversity
27 species
The golden silk orb-weavers (genus Nephila) are a genus of spiders noted for the impressive webs they weave. Nephila consists of numerous individual species found around the world. They are also commonly called golden orb-weavers, giant wood spiders or banana spiders. In North America, the golden silk orb-weavers (see also Nephila clavipes) are sometimes referred to as writing spiders due to occasional zigzag patterns (stabilimenta) built into their webs, though these occur much more frequently in the webs of Argiope, such as the St Andrew's Cross spider.

 Distribution
Golden silk orb-weavers are widespread in warmer regions throughout the world, with species in Australia, Asia, Africa (including Madagascar), and the Americas. One species, N. clavipes, occurs in the United States of America, where it ranges throughout the coastal southeast and inland, from North Carolina to Texas.

From Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_silk_orb-weaver#Distribution

See also..  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nephila_clavipes

Just because you have them in Austrailia doesn't mean that they don't also live here too.





Edited to shorten the length of the Wikipedia quote down to the most relevant bits.

[Belial]

What a bunch of arachnophobs.  When I was a kid growing up in Arkansas, we used to catch tarantulas with our hands and let them crawl all over us.

Once when the family was all watching TV in the living room, a tarantula crawled across the floor right in front of us.  My dad casually got up and gave it a good smack.  Instantly, hundreds of baby tarantulas that had been on her back crawled off and headed in every direction.  That’s about the time my mom started freaking out.

Jesus crimey!

[druski85]

What a bunch of arachnophobs.  When I was a kid growing up in Arkansas, we used to catch tarantulas with our hands and let them crawl all over us.

Once when the family was all watching TV in the living room, a tarantula crawled across the floor right in front of us.  My dad casually got up and gave it a good smack.  Instantly, hundreds of baby tarantulas that had been on her back crawled off and headed in every direction.  That’s about the time my mom started freaking out.

Banshee will never sleep again.

[CAP1]

You brought the argument up, then rejected it handily. Whenever anyone throws out that truth - spiders DO eat bugs, after all - I always say, great, by that token, maybe I'll just bring some Cobras in the house to make sure I never have a mouse or rat problem.

At a certain point, the solution becomes a problem.

funny you choose cobras. don't turn your back on one. they are one of the few snakes that will attack unprovoked.

[maddafinga]

The second worst spider related thing that ever happened to me:  Some years back, just after I was out of highschool and had dropped out of college, I was visiting my dad back home in Texas.  We had gone to the bayhouse for the weekend and were fishing out in Christmas Bay just off of the San Luis pass, between Galveston and the mainland of Texas.  It was just after noon and slightly breezy, and just a beautiful spring day. 

At some point we started seeing strands of web floating through the air, it was baby spiders, "ballooning."  Then there started to be more of them, and more still.  Inside of a couple of hours the air was filled with little baby spiders on strands of web, and so was the boat.  As we sat there fishing, both just sort of hunkered down and neither of us talking at all, baby spiders just kept landing all over us and crawling all over the place.  In a very short while we had to give up smacking and killing them, there even got to be too many to just brush off.  We just sort of sat there and took it.  Neither of us was willing to be the first one to break and suggest heading back to the dock.  No that it would have made any difference anyway though, we weren't far from the bayhouse anyway.  I remember at one point looking at my line in the water and there were 4 little spiders on my fishing line.  There were probably dozens of them on me, and the same on my dad.  The boat was just crawling with them. 

It stopped after a while and we ran around the bay at top speed, to get them off and out.  Neither of us said a word about it until we got back to the dock later that evening. 

I don't mind spiders at all, but like I said, I don't want them ON me. I can still remember that feeling I got with them all over me.