Man your weapons and fall in!! … ready to deploy!!


SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australians have been warned: angry arachnids are heading indoors.
Scientists say Australia's hot, humid and wet summer has had a bad effect on common, but potentially deadly, redback spiders.
Normally found in outdoor sheds, gardens and under roofs, the cantankerous creepy-crawlies are seeking shelter indoors in tropical Queensland and New South Wales, two of Australia's biggest states.
"There has been rain and winds which push falling leaves into the roof gutters, destroying their web. This leaves them no other option but to come down into the house," said Queensland Museum arachnologist Robert Raven.
Bites have been recorded at a rate of one a day, he said.
A female redback's bite usually results in sweating and pain, which slowly builds to the point of being unbearable.
No deaths from redback bites have been reported in Queensland since the introduction of an anti-venom.
The redback is one of the most common of Australia's seemingly endless supply of poisonous pests. A distant cousin of the American black widow, it is distinguished by a red stripe on the shiny black, thumbnail-sized body of the larger female.
Scientists describe the redback's existence as "amoral" because of their unique mating behavior in which males give themselves up to the deadly females to be killed and eaten after mating.
"It's all about foreplay. If he doesn't have the moves, she's not going to be interested," said Sydney Taronga Zoo exhibit supervisor Warrick Angus, who said he kept a redback as a pet.


You have to go to the experts when you're in trouble, Sharni.






:grin:

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LMAO.

<---grabs her bug vacuum and heads southwest.

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"Life is too short to wake up in the morning with regrets. So love the people who treat you right, forget about the ones who don't, and believe that everything happens for a reason. If you get a chance, take it. If it changes your life, then let it, and if you have to wait for what you really want, take the time because nobody said that life would be easy. They just promised it would be worth it." ~ Unknown author

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"If you're eva bitten by a redback spyda, you're gonna die."

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Put me on wheels and I'll turn tricks.

Clever? Nah, I ran out of that years ago. But if you find this, let me know, k?
"The road goes ever on..." ~ Tolkien

In memory of my friend skip...
Go then, there are other worlds than these

[QUOTE=Sharni][color=blue]We got the damn things everywhere *L*....ya just learn to be careful where ya put ya fingers and bits....

Really got to worry where ya puts your bits..especially yummy bits.

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Susan

And Sharni will not come to Canada because of Polar Bears? Sharni, we have 1 rattle snake, and even it is on the endangered list. Apparently the -25 c weather kills off most deadly animals.

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you have pot plants ? Growing your own weed?

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Plug me into somethin'

If the theory does not conform to the facts, then the facts must be discarded.

No good deed ever goes unpunished

Never argue with an idiot. He'll drag you down to his level, & beat you with experience.

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Remind me if I go and visit Austraila, I think I want to go with a full HazMat suit.

And here I thought it was only our IAKaraokeGirl that saw the man-hole-cover size spiders. :grin:

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You can add me to that list, too. I HATE the damn things. LOVE snakes and lizzards, but nothing is faster at freaking me out than a spider.



/me blushes



Even the Daddy Longlegs variety

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Life is too short not to love and be loved....preferably multiple times in one night.

I think men talk to women so they can sleep with them and women sleep with men so they can talk to them. ~ Jay McInerney

The *sixty-foot* ones, as I once described to WildIrish.

And Cherrypie7788? I spent about 15 minutes a little over a year ago, trying to kill a spider the size of NYC in my shower.

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"Life is too short to wake up in the morning with regrets. So love the people who treat you right, forget about the ones who don't, and believe that everything happens for a reason. If you get a chance, take it. If it changes your life, then let it, and if you have to wait for what you really want, take the time because nobody said that life would be easy. They just promised it would be worth it." ~ Unknown author

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LOL.. ^^^^^^

One day I was taking a shower.. looked up at the showerhead.. there about 10 inches away, clinging to the edge was a spider.. I jumped out of the shower really fast and shut off the cold water... boiled the bastard...

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A blessed thing it is for any man or woman to have a friend, one human soul whom we can trust utterly, who knows the best and worst of us, and who loves us in spite of all our faults.