Friday 19 September 2014

David Bowie and the Spiders from Malaysia

A really crap Photoshop job

You know I love spiders – please bear with me here – I know not everyone does. Seems I've had more than the usual number of close encounters lately; is this telling me something? But what? Yesterday I found the biggest one ever and it seemed particularly, spectacularly, legful. I swear I counted nine. And I counted them twice. But by the time I'd come back with my camera it had, of course, literally legged it. I also found a huge, lifeless one at the bottom of the birdbath this morning, fished it out and left it on a leaf to dry in the sun hoping that it might somehow survive. Five, five, hours later it was up and running about - you have to be patient bringing spiders back from the dead*. Federica (or her successor) is back in residence too.

Anyway, please forgive me the arachnid indulgence; I really just wanted to mention David Bowie. I just found out, whilst researching the possibility of nine-legged beasties (I know) that there is a davidbowie spider. It's large, yellow-haired and endangered.  Say what you like.  When it was newly discovered in Malaysia in 2009 it was named after him to raise awareness of threatened species. There's a neilyoungi too!  Whoever next?

Three posts in four days, what's going on?

*http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/04/090424-spider-resurrection-coma-drowning.html

11 comments:

  1. Weird -- I've got Bladerunner playing in the background and it's just got to the spider memory scene. "a hundred baby spiders came out... and they ate her"

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    1. Oh strange! I've actually never seen Blade Runner (!) so I don't know this scene... even more intrigued now...

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  2. This year has sen 'The Invasion of the Giant Spiders' here at Bear Towers. As I'm the only one willing to carefully pick the buggers up and place them outside, I'm in constant demand. Of course, if it's a big moth - don't ask! A Bowie spider? Hope it has more success than Dave's glass arachnid.

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  3. There was the biggest one I've ever seen outside a zoo lurking behind the shampoo bottle the other morning, it's a good job it was me ( it was carefully placed outside) rather than the daughters who saw it or you might have heard the screaming out there in the East!

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    1. My momma was bit once in each shin by a brown recluse...she is utterly terrified of anything with 8 legs. It was nothing to see her come streaking through a room and out into the yard...yelling the whole way.

      C - I saw a big yellow and black one yesterday. You get in the right spot in the woods and you'll bunches of 'em in the trees.They make these thick zig zag patterns in the middle of their webs...looks like bracing.

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    2. Sounds like you got a Wasp Spider there, Erik.

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  4. SB and CA - always lovely to know there are fellow spider saviours out there! Yes it seems to be a good year for big hairy house spiders (but no doubt a bad year for arachnaphobes).

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  5. I knocked our rotting old shed down last week, in preparation for a newer model, which is due to arrive any day now. Needless to say, it was ALIVE with spiders, some so huge that it made me visibly shudder. Our next door neighbour is carrying out his own interior decoration at the moment and he, and a friend who is giving him a helping hand, were having a tea break in the back garden. They offered to nip round give and this old fella a quick helping hand, sweating profusely as I was! The neighbour's mate is the kind of bloke you'd cross the road to avoid, if you found yourself walking towards him on a dark night. For all the world, he looks a bit of a hard-nut, thick-set and the sort that wouldn't take rubbish from anyone. Of course, he's actually a very nice guy, which is just as well, given the amount of time we spent laughing at him after he screamed, actually screamed, when he caught sight of a few of the spiders running around. 'I hate 'em. I'd rather take my chances with a tiger' he said. He explained that when he lived alone he would put glasses over any spiders he discovered in his flat, leaving them there until the next visitor came around, who would then be required to go round and remove them from the premises. This was some time ago, he's now married with a kid. 'How do you cope with spiders now?' I asked. He shivered. 'My little girl catches them up and puts the fuckers out' he said. Cue more laughter.

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    1. Haha, absolutely brilliant!
      It's a funny thing, isn't it., no logic to it...but your man there proves it can be a very real fear. Perhaps we should use this to our advantage... just take a spider with you on a night out in a dodgy part of town and watch the hard-nuts run a mile?

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  6. So where were the spiders, while the fly tried to break our balls

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    1. I think they must have been jamming good with Weird and Gilly.

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