Spiders Make Me Nervous

Traveling around Tree Ring on the Polaris is so much fun.  Except when you run into a giant spider web with a giant spider on it.  This happens quite often, and it seems like the spiders in Florida are gigantic. 

Enter my crutch.  It is useful for so many things besides helping me walk.  One if them is spider web whacking.  I drive, and Retro Man wings that thing like it's a machete.  

Sometimes we get friends.

They've never landed on me.

Yet.

But my heart gets thumping every time we encounter one on the trail.  When I've walked up to one on a web to get a close up, it quickly shakes like it is going to jump on you.  It's really freaky.  I'm always concerned they are going to jump on me and bite.

Fortunately, a little research shows this to be false.  According to the Shady Grove Training Center web site:

Golden silk spiders are very non-aggressive, and in all my years here, I have only heard of 2 people being bitten. They got a welt that went away in a couple of days. They normally do not bite unless you smack them first.  If one lands on you, all they want is "off".

Ok, so I'm cool.  

And I'm not researching any more in case someone else says there is a variant strain that DOES enjoy biting people.

Be sure to check out what Shady Grove wrote about the predictive powers of these spiders and Hurricanes.

So far, besides the Golden Silk spider, we've found what Florida Girl says is a Flower Crab Spider.  And of course I blogged about the Garden Spider attack.

Now bees and wasps, that's another story.  I have a barely controlled fear of them, and am known to run (ok, hobble) shrieking like a little girl.

Fortunately there have been no incidents to blog about.