A Few Things I Didn't Want To Learn, and Notes to Myself

[emanix]

1. Drowned spiders do not float, they sink.

2. If said drowned spider is in a cup of tea, it is therefore invisible (even more so if you happen to be in a dark room and focussing your attention on watching a film at the time).

3. The sensation of having a dead spider in your mouth is remarkably like sucking on the leafy bit from the top of a strawberry. Thankfully, it doesn't taste of much.

4. I have also realised that whilst not scared of spiders in the slightest, I have no idea which breeds are toxic if ingested, or any clue where this one had been. Yuck. :(

5. (Gap in knowledge) Still have no idea how said spider got into my cup of tea - now carefully inspecting all teabags and spoons for 'passengers', and hoping that none are stupid enough to abseil down from ceilings, or climb up from the table into my mug of hot beverage. The tea is sacred, dammit!

---

Notes to self (Mostly unrelated to above incident):

1. Do not feed trolls. No matter how tempting to do so. Even if they plead. Also, like gremlins, absolutely do not feed them after midnight.

2. Do not make blog posts about issues with specific partners, no matter how much it masquerades in your head as a request for advice, it's probably a rant in disguise. As a wise person pointed out recently, it's undignified as having your rows in the middle of the street. Don't do it. On the other hand, composing said rant for the benefit of the person concerned, and showing it to them after you've spoken about the issue in person, may be a good thing.

3. Really, seriously, don't feed the trolls. Nothing good ever comes of it. Put the conversation down, and step away.

4. Inspect all tea-making equipment carefully.

5. Don't get online before household chores are finished for the day. This means they'll never happen, and then you end up with dirty dishes and no clean clothes. - Doh!

Comments

[trishpiglet.livejournal.com]

As a child I was scared of drinking milk on the basis that a spider could hide in it, if it wanted

[hollykitten.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry for the loss of your spider, will you be holding a ceremony in lieu of a funeral?

[emanix.livejournal.com]

By the looks of it, he already had a viking burial in my mug of tea!

Catching up again...I know it's belated...

[weegoddess.livejournal.com]

::looks around furtively to see if anyone's watching that I'm on LJ::

::salutes the poor spider posthumously::

[joshuazelinsky.livejournal.com]

If a spider was small enough to fit in a teacup without you noticing it is almost certainly not poisonous and if it was poisonous there will be too little poison to matter for a person. Even most large spiders when deliberately biting can't do much than make a limb swell up uncomfortably. Small spiders can't even do that. If a small spider is getting digested then then there's really no serious worry.

[emanix.livejournal.com]

Hi Joshua, welcome to my journal, and thanks for the try at reassurance! I'm going to throw some unasked-for background info at you now though :)

Firstly a lot of the more poisonous spiders are really quite tiny - the female Latrodectus tredecimguttatus (European Black Widow) spider, whose bite can occasionally be fatal, is only about 10 mm in size.
Luckily they generally don't like the UK climate, so I'm not actually worried about that, but I'm certain there are a few breeds living in England that could give one a stomach-ache (a spider-breeding friend tells me there are some vicious little devils in the Bristol area!). The main issue is that I don't know what they look like, especially when boiled - and toxic or no, I still didn't know where it had been. I mean, I love bacon and all, but if an unidentified piece suddenly appears in my tea I'm still going to be upset!

Secondly, I drink tea from a pint mug - a critter doesn't have to be that tiny to hide in it. This guy was about 4cm legspan, maybe 2cm body. No tarantula, but not teeny-tiny either! (and as I said, we were watching a movie, so the room was dark).

Thirdly, and most importantly, I actually rather like spiders, but nowhere near as much as I like tea. The tea is sacred! If critters are going to commit suicide in my house, I feel it's distinctly rude of them to do it in my tea!

[joshuazelinsky.livejournal.com]

Hmm, interesting. I suppose I should have done some research before spouting off. I guess I'm use to living in the Northern US where there's really only one small seriously dangerous spider, the Northern widow (and my general spider knowledge is really limited to the US). (My impression also is that the bite is much more likely to be fatal to a child or elderly individual.) Even then, both the Northern and Southern black widows are much larger than 10 mm when full grown.

Although 2 cm is a very large critter. That's sort of in the yikes category.

I agree that that must have been very inconsiderate of the spider.

[emanix.livejournal.com]

Yup, very inconsiderate indeed. I'm a carnivore, but even so I'm not impressed with non-consensual corpse in my mouth!

Enough of this topic now! Yuck! (Pulls faces at the memory)