Showing posts with label spiders. Show all posts
Showing posts with label spiders. Show all posts

Saturday, August 07, 2010

Ouch! Now that hurts!

We had our summer house sprayed for spiders yesterday--perhaps the second time this season. Now the windows will need to be washed again. But, here's the big news. The owner of the spray company didn't do the application this time. Apparently, the day before he was at a job and a dog bit him in the scrotum and he had to have stitches! So an assistant came out to our place because the owner will be laid up for awhile.

Dog bites are serious, folks. And remember this word from a former veterinary medicine librarian who has seen the photos of torn up faces of children--ALL DOGS WILL BITE. Don't ever encourage young children to pet a dog in the park or on a walk, even if the owner assures you it's OK. Most dog bites are by young male dogs, owned by young males, and the victims are most often male children.

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Son of Elmo

There used to be in our basement a spider so large that we named him--Elmo. He wasn't a pet, but we didn't kill him. I've heard tales of my son-in-law and his brother Pete setting Lakeside hurdles time getting out of the basement and refusing to go down there to do laundry for years. Yesterday we had the exterior treated for spiders, but we don't do anything on the inside. Maybe we should. From tippy toe to toe I'm guessing Son of Elmo is about 3 inches.

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

4098

The power of a web

Yesterday morning when I returned to the house from coffee (about 7:30), I noticed the garage door was up. Must have forgotten to push the down button when I looked for the eclipse, I thought. When I pulled in and pushed the down-button in the car, the door went down and right back up. Must have not pulled in far enough, I thought, and got out and looked. No, there was plenty of clearance. I went into the house and told my husband there was something wrong with the garage door. Later when I came back from running a few errands, the door was down. When I asked what the problem was, he told me there was a spider web on the bottom of the far side of the door with a leaf caught in the threads, and the leaf passed over the light beam that signals something is in the way of the door (which is very heavy and could crush a child or a bicycle). I'm amazed both at the power of the little spider (who probably rode back from the lake with us on the side mirror of the van), and the technology put in place due to injuries from garage doors.

This leads me to the thought that technology cannot always protect people, especially stupid risk takers. Within a 1/2 mile of our home yesterday, pitch black outside, I thought I saw something in the headlights of the car in front of me where the street splits to a Y, so I slowed down (I was already only at about 30 mph because of just having left the drive-way). Yes, there was a biker in dark clothing, including a hooded sweatshirt so not even his pale skin reflected light. There were no lights or reflective tape on the bike. He had apparently stopped because he'd taken the wrong leg of the Y and was waiting to change lanes. I just shook my head in disbelief. There must be an angel riding on his handle bars offering to light his way, because truly this man was a very dim bulb.