Attack of the killer spiders and other stories sure to upset all arachnophobes
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Version 0 of 1. I give you, fellow bipeds, the latest from Spiderwatch, an organisation powered on terror alone that toils day and night (especially night!) to bring you news on giant arachnids crawling all over the world. Don’t thank me. Just go and put the bath plug in. First, a house in south London, owned by the kind of aspirational folk who get their shopping delivered from Waitrose. So far, so spider-free. But into this haven of peace and inflated house prices comes a bunch of Fairtrade bananas and, well, you can see where this is going … And so it came to pass that the world’s deadliest spider, the Brazilian wanderer, was delivered by Waitrose. The critter was eventually removed (but to where to?) and the family was left deeply traumatised. As was I, a lifelong arachnophobe who spots spiders with the same zest that red tops spot side boobs. I once didn’t go to the toilet in my own home for a week after seeing a spider in the bath. I’m not bragging, but that’s how good I am at arachnophobia. This is autumn, after all. A terrifying time of year when spider stories scuttle from every dark corner and we arachnophobes are forced to stay at home, refusing to touch anything except the internet, where we gorge ourselves daily on evil spider stories. We know not why we do it. We know only that we cannot stop. Thus the stories keep coming, like baby spiders spilling from an egg sac. There was the one about the Australian man who claimed a spider burrowed into his stomach. Or – my personal favourite – a scientist on a night-time walk in the Guyanan rainforest who last week found himself face to face with the biggest spider in the world, the goliath birdeater. This spider was the size of a child’s forearm. Its feet clip-clopped upon the forest floor like eight hooves. It weighed as much as a puppy. It was brown and hairy like a puppy, too. I think the puppy similarities probably ended there. Basically, if it’s not South America, it’s south London. Nowhere are we safe from the tyranny of the hoofed tarantula. Or, at the very least, the tyranny of the stories of the hoofed tarantula. Later that night, I found myself wandering into my kitchen, gazing at the bananas in the fruit bowl and screaming softly. At least they were from Sainsbury’s, I reasoned. Perhaps everything would be OK … wouldn’t it? |