205 Rob’s completely rational phobia
Seriously you guys, watch ANY nature documentary reenactment.
When I lived in Oklahoma, we had a spider problem. They were coming from the bathroom. Nobody believed me when I said they were the terrifying loxosceles reclusa, the brown recluse whose bite causes a NECROTIZING ULCER. It was me versus them.
One day, I casually opened my underwear drawer and pulled out a pair of my favorite skivvies. Noticing they were inside out, I gave them a flick and out fell the largest brown recluse of all. FROM MY BOXERS-BRIEFS.
I was one necrotizing bite away from becoming a eunuch. True story.
↓ Transcript
CRAIG
Kate?! I'm coming! Are you okay?!
EEEEEEEEEEE!!!!
CRAIG
Rob?
ROB
Kill it! It's one of those ebola spiders that hides in fruit baskets!
Kate?! I'm coming! Are you okay?!
EEEEEEEEEEE!!!!
CRAIG
Rob?
ROB
Kill it! It's one of those ebola spiders that hides in fruit baskets!
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Oh great.
My wife is a travel nurse and is currently in Oklahoma, has been there for years and likely will be there a bit longer since it keeps her close to the grandkids. Now any time I go down to visit I am going to be thinking of this post and keeping my undies in a ziplocked garment bag. Took years to get over my dears of finding tarantulas and scorpions everywhere after living in Texas for a while … now this.
Thanks. 😛
Kill it with fire, KILL IT WITH FIRE
@Harrison: I do hope they never put you in charge of nukes. One spider and we could all go up.
The worst phobias are always the ones with an element of rationality. Spiders ARE terrifying as a poisonous, potentially fatal creature that could be ANYWHERE. People who are scared of tarantulas bewilder me, since those spiders are not as poisonous and really easy to see, but things like brown recluses are pure paranoia fuel.
There’s always that brief risk/reward analysis when I see one of my area’s little brown spiders and think, “The odds of this being a brown recluse are pretty low, and it biting me even lower, and dying from the bite lower still… but it’s POSSIBLE because those bloody things are tough to identify and poisonous and that’s enough to not want to get close!”
…Surprisingly “scream like a little girl” is immune to risk/reward analysis. Perhaps we should perform a study on that.
When I lived in Louisiana, every person who found out I am scared of spiders gleefully told me their brown recluse story.
Bastards.
It is kind of amazing how you can still bring rationality into your phobia. I extremely hate cockroaches, and there is not a lick of rationality behind it. When I see one of them around in a room, I nuke the whole room with pesticide, lock it, and evacuate from the area until everything is clear. Even though I know they are at worst possibly contaminate food, instead of being an actual danger to me like a poisonous spider or the amount of poison I use to kill them, I just can’t stand them.
There is no rationality behind it. Fear is a powerful thing.
Has anyone seen Arachniphobia? I rest my case. ::shudder::
Completely rational.
Anyone seen arachniphobia? I didn’t realise it had been lost.
I live in Australia, and our house has a redback infestation right now.
Anyone want to house-swap?
Anyone?
Please?
What’s a redback? One of Australia’s many terrifyingly poisonous fauna?
Red backs? Maybe they should have put on a higher factor sunscreen?
Here is a great site covering spider myths in detail and with a pretty fair amount of good references. it calls into question a LOT of woo that I’d taken at face value since “everyone” told me so.
http://www.burkemuseum.org/spidermyth/
Now, this isn’t to say it will cure a phobia, the thing about phobias is even when you KNOW there isn’t a problem you’re scared anyway. but, it might be a help.