Just killed a spider.

[Toddy]

Now, normally I don't kill spiders, I just put them outside (Harvestman said that for some of them that alone is a death sentence though) but this one was on the grapes I had sitting on the worktop. I opened the box yesterday and meant to wash them before I put them on a plate, and only started really paying attention to them this morning. (As usual I got distracted )
Anyway, big spider in among them. Well, big for us, could have passed for a normal one to be honest but I wasn't risking it. Foreign fruit, and something insecty (purists can claim all they like, arachnids are insecty)
so I killed it.

Years ago, a lot of years ago we had a speaker booked to come to the Young Wives (CofS, think junior Women's Guild) from Ffyes bananas, but the speaker couldn't come so the warehouse in Glasgow obligingly sent out two of their warehouse workers to speak to a group of over thirty young women out here. It was a two way culture shock I think, but the fellows were interesting to listen to, answered loads of queries, seemed to enjoy the tea and cakes (and doggy bags we sent them away home with, plate loads of home baking, we were rather competitive with each other back then on the baking) and left us all rather worried about just what might appear in the fruit and veg. Spiders, snakes, assorted insects, scorpions, lizards, etc.,....and then today I find I've still got that wariness about insects in foreign fruit.

Alas poor spider; unwelcome wee visitor.

Anyone found anything in their fruit and veg ?

M

 

[Wander]

I once bought a pack of grapefruit and there was a lemon in there.

I decided at that point what I would have carved on my gravestone: 'Here Lies A Lemon In A Bowl Of Grapefruit'

 

[Klenchblaize]

Anyway, big spider in among them. Well, big for us, could have passed for a normal one to be honest but I wasn't risking it. Foreign fruit, and something insecty (purists can claim all they like, arachnids are insecty) so I killed it.
M

Crossbow or rifle??

K

 

[Toddy]

Size 4 moccasin I'd brushed it off the grapes and the thing dropped and ran.

 

[Toddy]

I once bought a pack of grapefruit and there was a lemon in there.

I decided at that point what I would have carved on my gravestone: 'Here Lies A Lemon In A Bowl Of Grapefruit'

Right colour, right fruity family, just not quite the right fit though.

 

[mousey]

An old girlfriend found a slug in a salad from a restaurant once

 

[Toddy]

Son2 found a wasp inside a bought in Madeira cake one Christmas.
I don't think I've bought another cake since.

M

 

[Janne]

Tiny slugs in supermarket bought lettuce.

Once I found some kind of eggs in a supermarket banana bunch.
A kind of fluffy cocoon with the eggs inside.

Here, in my own bananas, I get spiders, cockroaches, the odd scorpion, bird poo, millipedes.
On the coconuts - same.

 

[Laurentius]

Oh goody it is going to rain now.

 

[Nice65]

Size 4 moccasin I'd brushed it off the grapes and the thing dropped and ran.

You should have got a pic M. Mind that, I was on the phone today to a friend and heard several levels of swearing, phone was still live for a couple of minutes, she got back and said she’d trapped a hornet in the bathroom.

Good luck said I. We seem to have a natural instant inbuilt fear sometimes. I totally get you whacking a spider, they run too fast and are very creepy. The little black scorpions that drop from the ceiling at my friends house in Provence don’t really bother them at all. They clatter onto the floor tiles, then scuttle off at high speed. Me, I’m about to flip my lid while they just carry on with the conversation.

 

[Toddy]

I admit that I'm not terribly squicked out by insects as a whole. Can't say I want them in the house, but, "Kill It!!!", isn't my usual first reaction to one.
Some of them are really quite beautiful, and I admit to a fondness for bees and a complete and utter hatred of clegs/horseflies and no liking for midgies.

 

[Sundowner]

Now, normally I don't kill spiders, I just put them outside (Harvestman said that for some of them that alone is a death sentence though) but this one was on the grapes I had sitting on the worktop. I opened the box yesterday and meant to wash them before I put them on a plate, and only started really paying attention to them this morning. (As usual I got distracted )
Anyway, big spider in among them. Well, big for us, could have passed for a normal one to be honest but I wasn't risking it. Foreign fruit, and something insecty (purists can claim all they like, arachnids are insecty)
so I killed it.

Years ago, a lot of years ago we had a speaker booked to come to the Young Wives (CofS, think junior Women's Guild) from Ffyes bananas, but the speaker couldn't come so the warehouse in Glasgow obligingly sent out two of their warehouse workers to speak to a 30+ group of women out here. It was a two way culture shock I think, but the fellows were interesting to listen to, answered loads of queries, seemed to enjoy the tea and cakes (and doggy bags we sent them away home with, plate loads of home baking, we were rather competitive with each other back then on the baking) and left us all rather worried about just what might appear in the fruit and veg. Spiders, snakes, assorted insects, scorpions, lizards, etc.,....and then today I find I've still got that wariness about insects in foreign fruit.

Alas poor spider; unwelcome wee visitor.

Anyone found anything in their fruit and veg ?

M

Oh heck. That puts me back a few years now. I must have been 11 or 12 when my dad was the only guy in town who knew about bananas. When an articular lorry had to be emptied on weekends, he asked me and my brothers to help carry the bananas -still on the stalk in those days, long before they started to put them in plastic and boxes - into the "tropical" rooms where they ripened. We found snakes, tarantula and other spiders/ insects which we took to the pet shop and flogged them for a fiver each. This plus earnings made us feel rich back then. BUT , the memories are priceless ,

 

[Nice65]

I admit that I'm not terribly squicked out by insects as a whole. Can't say I want them in the house, but, "Kill It!!!", isn't my usual first reaction to one.
Some of them are really quite beautiful, and I admit to a fondness for bees and a complete and utter hatred of clegs/horseflies and no liking for midgies.

Horseflies are horrible things, like The Terminator of the insect world. I was in the shower a couple of days ago, covered in soap, and a hungry horsefly came straight at me. Cue much foul language and slithering about, the thing was relentless. I grabbed it in my t-shirt, hit the flush on the toilet and flicked it into the water. It rolled around in the water for a bit, then just flew out straight at me again.

 

[Janne]

I am against spreading chemicals as a principle.
But then we started discovering scorpions inside our newly built house.

We get the outside perimeter sprayed now. Stops all walking insects.

 

[Robson Valley]

Horse flies all across Canada in the Boreal Forest here can be so bad that they force the forest animals into the water of lakes and rivers for relief.
I was advised to carry a twig of Black Spruce (Picea mariana) in my pocket. The needles are single and short.

Each needle-leaf has a barb at the base.
Inserted carefully into the south end of a live horse fly, it makes them tail-heavy.
Release the horse fly.
Much to your satisfaction, all they can do is fly straight up and out of sight.

 

[JonathanD]

When I used to do emergency call outs for airports, I got a huge amount of snake sightings, which ranged from caterpillars , to pit vipers.

 

[daveO]

I had a similar experience a few years ago. I'm fine with creepy crawlies but a spider ran out of some fruit we'd just brought home and it might sound stupid but it was a bit too hyper for my liking and not one I recognised so I hit it with a spatula I still feel bad about it for some reason but like you said foreign fruit and spider just makes you instantly assume it's going to be something nasty.

 

[Trotsky]

I've not had wildlife in food like that but, in a previous job I was often required to service specialist surveillance cameras used on oil rigs etc. We had one come back from Italy and when I removed the sunhood from the camera I found it was just one big spider's nest! Various different looking eggs in silk and a few little live ones wandering about. Not wanting to take any chances me and the guy I was working with ended up drowning everything in WD40 and emptied two cans of freezer spray on everything.
Not my usual reaction at all but, even if the spiders were harmless do I really want to let a non-native species loose?

 

[Insel Affen]

: 'Here Lies A Lemon In A Bowl Of Grapefruit'

Reminds me of the the old guardroom telephone answer......"Fruit bowl! Duty Lemon speaking, Sir!"

 

[Tony]

Carried out a big spider yesterday evening, I did think about leaving it (it was in the bedroom) but figured that the amusement wouldn't be worth it. I was cleaning the deck the other day with the pressure washer and kept having to stamp my feet to get the spiders to drop off my legs where they were climbing to escape the water, in the end you feel the slightest thing and you start stamping, the kids thought it was funny, not that they wanted to swap places...