Spiders

Interesting beasties: spiders. But here in the UK the worst (best) one is likely to see is the annual autumn visit of a 5 cm house spider. You know: the species that runs across the carpet during Coronation Street. Incidentally I shall revise my low opinion of this program the first time I see a spider stop and watch it. (And by the way, today is October 1st 1995, decimalisation day in the UK, and had I described the size in inches I would probably have been arrested by the weights and measures secret police (private, United Kingdom only, joke)).
Spiders have 8.0 legs (decimal). I used to think that only tarantulas and bird eating spiders grew to any impressive sort of size, but in San Pablo City, Philippines, walking up someone's kitchen wall (me, not the spider), I observed, with impressive scientific detachment, a beast with a good eight inch leg span. Imagine that in your rice bowl...poorly camouflaged but probably quite tasty if only you could grab it before it grabbed you. I anticipate this would be easier with the Philippine fork and spoon method of eating, than with the chopsticks favoured elsewhere in S.E.Asia.
The local people inform me that this spider has been seen eating the house lizard, an incredible edible creature some 3-4 inches long that can happily run upside down across the ceiling. This paragraph comes to an abrupt end as I am arrested by the afore-mentioned decimalisation thought police. I share my cell with a couple of spiders who tried to sell potatoes by the pound weight instead of the metre. Oh what a tangled web of silly rules has been weaved by those who made up some of our decimalisation legislation.
Another brute,this time one of the great big hairy body and legs brigade, had a web that stretched across the road between a couple of palm trees and a telegraph pole. It hung there, fifteen feet or so above the middle of the road looking hungry. We decided that it preyed on local cyclists and stray carabao at night. Its size and obvious visibility would deter anything less that a late model Sherman tank, with full battle equipment, from risking passage along the road during daylight.
In the Philippines, it is very common to see armed guards outside banks, businesses, food shops and MacDonalds, armed with pump action shotguns and the like. You, like myself, will now realise that their presence has nothing at all to do with the risk of robbery or the food violently disagreeing with someone. We KNOW why the shotguns are REALLY needed there!
STOP PRESS..... A friend says his spider watches Coronation Street, and has done ever since he squashed it as it crossed the floor in September last year.
Blade's Second Law states that: "The spider in the bath has a far greater effect on your water than the Coriolis effect, regardless of which hemisphere you live in." Can't understand why Newton and Einstein did not discover this law before I did.

Here is an interesting link to all things Arachnophobic.......

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