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Big spider


dipper
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Sat in conservatory having a coffee.Saw this spider on the wall 2 1/2” long big body and big legs .At first I thought it was a joke spider had a close look and it was real .rang my daughter to have a look .Sometimes find large spiders in the house but this one was huge .

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the most blood curdling scream i ever heard came from my girl friends mum.....she was in the bath at the time and i was downstairs with her daughter......the poor woman totally freaked out.....

her daughter was fine with spiders and sorted it out..

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2 hours ago, ditchman said:

the most blood curdling scream i ever heard came from my girl friends mum.....she was in the bath at the time and i was downstairs with her daughter......the poor woman totally freaked out.....

her daughter was fine with spiders and sorted it out..

So you didn't burst into the bathroom and save the day.

Not to mention get an eye full.

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When on \texas it was the small ones which you neede avoid. The Brown Recluse would bite you without you knowing until a pitrid hole started to form at the point of the bite and I mean HOLE.  Needing very urgent medical help.  The seriously big black boogers you didn't need to worry about, yes they would bite but only if seriously abused.

I saw a very large spider here in my workshop yesterday and it had a flying ant at bay, eventually the ant lost but the spider knew the ant could sting and just kept dabbing it and backing off. The spider was a good inch 25mm across so must look up what species in my book.

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I'd never heard of spiders  biting in the uk until recent years. It must be reasonably common because I  knòw two people who have been bitten  by spiders.  One person just had a red area the size of a smartly but the other persons arm got very swollen, black red and caused problems for many months.  My daughters would just pick the spiders up and put them outside.  Me I'd  introduce any spider to a bat..l not the winged ones.

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2 hours ago, Minky said:

I'd never heard of spiders  biting in the uk until recent years. It must be reasonably common because I  knòw two people who have been bitten  by spiders.  One person just had a red area the size of a smartly but the other persons arm got very swollen, black red and caused problems for many months.  My daughters would just pick the spiders up and put them outside.  Me I'd  introduce any spider to a bat..l not the winged ones.

I know a woman who has got bitten by spiders twice in recent years.Both times she had nasty reactions.Once of the occasions was when she was asleep in bed and she got bitten above the ankle.

I am no expert but am pretty sure they claimed they were False Widow spider that were to blame.

I worked for 4 months on a sheep station in  S Australia and there were lots of red back spiders there which I presume is just another name for Black Widows. They were everywhere and you had to be very careful when lifting anything in the work shop and putting on your boots in the morning.There were also scorpions but the biggest threat were snakes which were in the wood pile.We had to light the fire every morning under a barrel so we would have hot water for a shower when we finished but we saw some brutes of snakes there and by all accounts some of them were both fast and dangerous.Given that we were 63km from the next house and 4.5.hours from nearest shop or area of civilisation there was no hope of anyone coming to your aid in a hurry.

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1 hour ago, gmm243 said:

I know a woman who has got bitten by spiders twice in recent years.Both times she had nasty reactions.Once of the occasions was when she was asleep in bed and she got bitten above the ankle.

I am no expert but am pretty sure they claimed they were False Widow spider that were to blame.

I worked for 4 months on a sheep station in  S Australia and there were lots of red back spiders there which I presume is just another name for Black Widows. They were everywhere and you had to be very careful when lifting anything in the work shop and putting on your boots in the morning.There were also scorpions but the biggest threat were snakes which were in the wood pile.We had to light the fire every morning under a barrel so we would have hot water for a shower when we finished but we saw some brutes of snakes there and by all accounts some of them were both fast and dangerous.Given that we were 63km from the next house and 4.5.hours from nearest shop or area of civilisation there was no hope of anyone coming to your aid in a hurry.

False widow is a general name for several species in the Steatoda genus and we have six in the UK. The one that, if the Daily Fail's to be believed (it's not) is FRIGHTENINGLY DANGEROUS!, causes flesh to ROT IN AGONY! and would probably carry teenagers off by the sack load is the noble false widow, S.nobilis. All those terrifying images of open wounds and scared relatives round bedsides aren't strictly to do with the bite, but more down to either an allergic reaction or more likely bacterial infections, common with spider bites because of what their fangs are doing and where they're going!. The vast majority of these stories seem to run on way beyond the venom's efficacy window and present symptoms that it's simply not able to do, because it doesn't have the right necrotic (flesh killing) toxins in it. Like bees or peanuts, having an allergic reaction to something's an altogether different affair, but then again the symptoms are anaphylaxis-related, not toxin-related 

Red back spiders are indeed a species of black widow (again, there are a few of them), from the genus Latrodectus - the true widows. This includes all the black and brown widows all over the  world. They're far nastier than the false widows. The toxins in the venom work in a similar way (called latrodectism) to the false widows, but are far more potent and do pose serious health risks. But again, they don't do this whole flesh rotting/infecting thing; that's a secondary infection and nothing directly to do with the spider's venom. 

Latrodectus species do occasionally show up here. The European Black Widow can get into anything imported from the Mediterranean, but Southern African and redbacks from down under also show up. Interestingly, Steatoda grossa, aka the cupboard spider and one of the false widows we have here, actively preys on true widows. We have at least two of the false widows living in our house and garden. S.nobilis, The noble false widow from the conservatory and S.grossa (cupboard spider) who's lurking in the shed

nobilis.jpg.a9ff61a37e7c6bdee630cd924f029476.jpg

grossa.jpg.144826879ada71dcc008a70a4e6fdf4d.jpg

The one I'd love to see in the UK is S.paykulliana, because that goes the whole hog in trying to look like a true widow. Sadly they're mostly just an accidental import, but you'd do a double take if you saw this'un in your fruit bowl...

image.png.c9f9fd0f4a262281641a48a7b1fa4bad.png

Edited by chrisjpainter
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8 hours ago, Minky said:

I'd never heard of spiders  biting in the uk until recent years. It must be reasonably common because I  knòw two people who have been bitten  by spiders.  One person just had a red area the size of a smartly but the other persons arm got very swollen, black red and caused problems for many months.  My daughters would just pick the spiders up and put them outside.  Me I'd  introduce any spider to a bat..l not the winged ones.

I've picked up a few spider bites . The first one that was quite nasty , left me with a golf ball sized lump on the back of my neck , that took months to dissappear.  The second one was about three years or so ago , and was on my finger. This one on my finger is a different colour and size every day . Sometimes it hurts,  and sometimes it doesn't.  I was fishing yesterday and got a couple of stings from stinging nettles on my leg  . Within a few minutes the spider bite on my finger was the size of half a marble , and was red  . The nettle sting reaction happens just about every time I go shooting or fishing.

A few years ago , I filled my log store with wood that had lots of false widow spiders . They would regularly bite me on my forearms , and belly . They just left a small red patch that was itchy and a tiny bit sore for an hour or so .

On the subject of cellar spiders. I'd left some camo netting on a farm for a while . When I bought it home and chucked it under the stairs , I noticed cellar spiders starting to appear in there . Since then , they've spread around my house , and we rarely see any other spider 🕷. 

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One of my colleagues at work got bitten by a spider on his hand while gardening. His whole arm swelled up and he spent 2 weeks in hospital very ill. He was off work for a couple of months. His hand was still slightly swollen when he came back to work. They never did identify what type of spider it was, but they reckon it was a very bad allegic reaction to the bite.

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There was an old lady who lived beside us years ago,her father had been a game keeper in Englnad but she had moved to beside us when she got married. 

She used to always say ' If you want to live and thrive,let a spider stay alive' .I don't honestly think I have ever killed one on purpose.

She also had a brother who went down with a ship in one of the world wars.I was only about 8 or so but I remember her telling us this and she had a large print on the wall of the ship and a big gold type medal also in the frame.I can't remember an awful lot about it but think she told me that she got it as her brother had died whilst in service.I am sure someone here will know a lot more about it than I do.

Anyway,I always admired it when I went into the house and looked at it before I glanced through her daily copy of the Sun,funnily enough never making it to page 4!! I would have loved to have had it and often think about it but when she died her daughter cleared out the house and burnt it with a pile of other stuff on the lawn.

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I got bit on my hand one night whilst asleep. The fangs or whatever were about 6mm apart (we measured it in the office). It was sore and swollen and oozed puss for about 10 days. Sometimes I would sit and squeeze it out till it ran clear and felt better. No idea what the spider was but in the house I only ever see house spiders so it was probably one of them. I have sent flase widows in the potting shed and oddly the chicken coup but not in the house. Occasionally I bug bomb the entire house and kill the lot.

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17 hours ago, dipper said:

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I remember my lad - lying on a rug reading something and one of these came by his foot and when he moved his foot - it actually reared at his foot - it quickly became a pancake to much nagging from my wife as she hates killing spiders.

A couple of days later there was one in the hall - I told her and she went to catch it to let it out - and it reared at her - to which she made it into a pancake 🤣

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18 hours ago, gmm243 said:

 

She also had a brother who went down with a ship in one of the world wars.I was only about 8 or so but I remember her telling us this and she had a large print on the wall of the ship and a big gold type medal also in the frame.I can't remember an awful lot about it but think she told me that she got it as her brother had died whilst in service.I am sure someone here will know a lot more about it than I do.

 

The World War One Memorial Plaque was made from Bronze and hence it was popularly known as the “Dead Man’s Penny” among front-line troops, also becoming widely known as, the “Death Penny”, “Death Plaque” or “Widow's Penny”. It was in October 1916 that the British Government setup a committee for the idea of a commemorative plaque that could be given to the next of kin for those men and women whose deaths were due to the First World War of 1914-18.

The first a family would know of the death of family member was the arrival of a telegram from the War Office.  This would be followed by the World War One Death Plaque and any medals the serviceman would have earned serving his country.

The original plaque was a 12 centimetre disk cast in bronze gunmetal, which included an image of Britannia and a lion, two dolphins that represented Great Britain's sea power and the emblem of Imperial Germany's eagle being torn to pieces by another lion. Britannia is holding an oak spray with leaves and acorns. Beneath this was a rectangular tablet where the deceased name was cast into the plaque. No rank was given as it was intended to show equality in their sacrifice. On the outer edge of the disk it bears the inscription, 'He died for freedom and honour'.  The memorial plaque was posted to the next of kin protected by a firm cardboard purpose made folder, which was then placed in a white HMSO envelope.

Production of the plaques and scrolls, which was supposed to be financed by German reparation money, began in 1919 with approximately 1,150,000 issued. They commemorated those who fell between 4th August, 1914 and 10th January, 1920 for home, Western Europe and the Dominions whilst the final date for the other theatres of war or for those died of attributable causes was 30th April 1920.

The next of kin of the 306 British and Commonwealth military personnel who were executed following a Court Martial did not receive a memorial plaque

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