Discussion: spiders

If you ever get around to checking FB, do *not* look at the pics we posted of spiders from Australia. The reptiles are fine. The spiders are scary-looking and can kill you in 8 minutes.

Ah, Lawrence, KS...

Spiders would be an improvement here at Spruce Woods Provincial Park. Now that I think of it, some spruce would even be an improvement. If I were naming it I might call it Urushiol Provincial Park.

What is the point of having a word like "vicarious" if we can't make use of it now and then? ; )

Having grown up in a land where poison ivy was everywhere, I find I am happier to be in a land where there isn't any. And if a strange urge ever should come over me to run through a field overgrown in ivy, I will do it, but I will do it vicariously.

Good call. Anna generally hasn't learned to live vicariously, yet, and so we get to buy stock in Technu...

There is no Churchill in California. I assume you meant Churchill MB (though you probably used CA to mean Canada).

I doubt the land where you grew up had poison ivy as extensively "everywhere" as it is here. I think this breaks my PR for the most poison ivy of anywhere I've orienteered. OMG. But at least it distracts you from the difficulty you're having reading the map.

Victoria, this just gives me another reason to veer away from FB. On one of the first runs I took from one set of our accommodations in Australia, I met up with an Australian Funnel Web Spider which was waiting in the middle of the path I was on, waiting for for prey--like me! You could tell how badly it wanted to go at it from the way it reared back and lifted its front legs, threatening a charge that could only result in one outcome. I flung my compass at it, and never looked back....

Spiders are no problem for orienteers at Clinton Lake. When the woods are filled with spiders, you wouldn't step foot off trail. And, when you stay on trails, you have to problem with spiders because there's a local spider-web-removal club (aka trail running club) that clears the trails first thing most mornings.

I needed the "spider-web-removal club" this morning as got a full head wrap of a web on my trail run this morning. Too focussed on the footing as don't need any more trips until the last ones heal more. Completely missed the impending doom of web wrap until too late. Mostly peeled off with only a few strands on the glasses remaining.

I think you are the spider-web-removal club! I'm sure that later runners appreciated your efforts.

Also, I came across my old spider web rating system.

http://okansas.blogspot.com/2008/08/spider-webs-in...

It is not the spider webs that really bother me, but rather the large, plump 8 legged creatures that too often adorn those webs. The one saving grace about running into a web in the woods or across a trail is that at least you know it isn't going to be a black widow in it.

That's a pretty good spider web rating system. I think it could be adapted for grizzly bears in the Grand Teton/Yellowstone area.

Only one spider web encountered yesterday in MB, but enough burrs and cheatgrass to make it not worthwhile to pick them off my socks and o-pants, and three hungry looking ticks on my legs after. Many, many hectares of knee high poison ivy.

This does not conjure up a desirable imagery, Charlie. I would take spiders over hectares of knee high poison ivy, and that's even before the fact that knee high on you would register as something higher on me.

Even in western Nebraska the sandhills, while looking pleasant enough at some remove, do not turn out to be near as friendly as they would seem once you get up close and personal. The open hills above the Bay (in the Bay area) have that kind of quality to them, too.

The Clay Hills of western Nebraska appear to be devoid of unpleasant vegetation.