I ran into this big bastard today at a Wastewater Plant, which incidentally is located right across the street from a 60 year old pulp mill. I imagine the combination of weird chemicals has turned this thing into some sort of mutant. Maybe if I let it bite me I'll turn into Spiderman :laughing:
Pretty sure this is a female Giant House Spider, Tegenaria duellica. The web was definitely funnel shaped.
What's the biggest creepy crawly you've come across?
These wolf spiders are as common as flys round here:
To give you an idea on size, the common ones are about 3" from tip to tip, but we've seen plenty near 4". Usually a lot more hairy than the pic though.....
These wolf spiders are as common as flys round here:
To give you an idea on size, the common ones are about 3" from tip to tip, but we've seen plenty near 4". Usually a lot more hairy than the pic though.....
Monster cockroaches live in the Philip Morris Manufacturing Center. Spiders too. (poor apprentice should have never told me he was afraid of spiders...) Aside from bugs, I've dealt with years of nasty grease splatter on walls. It looked like it had been painted on. I "girly-ed" up real quick when I had to remove the face plates. Bleh!!
Spotted this one by the door of our shop one morning. We dripped a little water on it to see if it would take off. I'm told it is a Dobson Fly. I guess they are common in the South but, it was the first time any of us had ever encountered one.
Eric
Watch those funnel nest spiders. Guy at work got to close, spider jumped on him, bit him on the lip. Swelled up real bad, scared, the swelling went away, but the swelling returns each year about the same time.
The House Spiders we have here build nasty ugly funnel webs but they aren't poisonous or anything. The bites probably hurt like hell though :laughing: My wife hates them but I like having them around. They eat bugs like crazy and they also chase off other spiders, including the venomous ones (here on the coast the only venomous spiders we have are Hobo spiders, and you don't see them too often). Inland from the valley eastward they've got black widows.
About 23 miles outside of Reno, just east of the power plant, they're attempting to make the "world's largest industrial park." I got to build some of the first places out there. The area, apart from the interstate, is pure wilderness. It's desert, though the river and cooling ponds for the power plant are real wildlife magnets.
We had a mountain lion walk through the site. We had a snowy owl (5-ft wingspan) winter over in the building. Wild horses and deer were common. We had bald eagles and golden eagles hang around. THEN they had me mount lights on the outside of the building.
The next morning, the outside walls were covered with bugs. HUGE bugs. Two kinds.
One was a beetle whose body measured 1" wide and 2" long. In flight you thought it was a sparrow.
The other was a moth with a 3/4" wide and 1-3/4" long body, with 5" wings.
And to think of all the times I've camped in that desert ...
Around here we have something like that, called a hummingbird moth because that's the size of it; wingspan 4" and a 1.5" long snout. It's what tomato worms become.
While on the subject......
In crawls, handholes and pedistal cabinets we find a lot of brown recluse and black widow, the latter has been real bad with the mild winters. If a person don't know how to identify those two I suggest you learn. A decent tutorial is here
Although harmless and not nearly as big as they sometimes are, it's always fun accidentally walking through its web and having him stuck to your leg. Wish someone could of videoed my dance moves trying to shake this f$&cker off!
The bigges one that I have seen was a wheel bug. It measured about 1.5" across, not that big, but big enough. It stung my dad while he was cutting grass. Me said that it was the worst pain he had ever felt. He still has a scar on his hand from it, and this happened almost 2 years ago.
The bigges one that I have seen was a wheel bug. It measured about 1.5" across, not that big, but big enough. It stung my dad while he was cutting grass. Me said that it was the worst pain he had ever felt. He still has a scar on his hand from it, and this happened almost 2 years ago.
Those things sting?? I had a smaller version of that one that I picked up and let rest on my finger a few weeks ago. Just did it for spite because the wife was freaking out that a bug was near her. He just sat there for a few minutes and flew off. I've always called them Potato bugs, that's what my Mom called them.
Most of the work we do is in Swamp Loggers Country. As a matter of fact we would bump into Bobby Goodson, who was the "star" of the Swamp Loggers show, just so you get an idea of the landscape cuz I don't have any pictures.
Anyways, we had a black bear hanging out on a new slab one morning.
My buddy got bit by a water moccasin.
Huge flies 2 inches long green eyed flies stag beetles
Ospreys golden eagles turkey buzzards wild turkey falcon
Alligators
King snake timber rattlers diamondback rattlers
Deer
I occasionally run across a Taranchula which is about as big as your hand but generally harmless. We also have some of those big ass 3" flying cockroaches which populate tropical places like Hawaii and Florida.
I live in Winnipeg, which is in Canada. Thankfully we do not have a lot of really creepy native insects here. I was working in a Safeway (grocery store) getting ready to run some pipe in a crawl space. Got down in the crawl space and left faster than a spicy burrito through a white guy when i saw a spider with a diameter of 6" sitting on it's web on the purling. it's web was so thick you could not see through it. Our local bug killer said that it must have come here with a shipment of bananas.
Eric
Watch those funnel nest spiders. Guy at work got to close, spider jumped on him, bit him on the lip. Swelled up real bad, scared, the swelling went away, but the swelling returns each year about the same time.
etb
We have alot of BW's here this year too. Finding them wherever they have a food supply for them, they like crickets here, and other spiders. Have a good picture of a BW on another thread here.
One of those traveled home with me from a desert camping trip. He was locked in the trailer for a week with no food or water. Another week in a jar while I was trying to figure out what he was. Very durable species. Mean little phuckers.
Speaking of Australia, amongst other horrible critters, they have the awful tunnel web spider, that lil bastard is mean. Their fangs can grow to a 1/4" and can pierce a toe nail. Also very aggressive and venomous. Any ausy cats on here who can share some serious bug stories?
Haha! Women and their fear of bugs... ::rolls eyes::
I did meet a guy who screams like a girl over cockroaches. I wonder if he ever noticed the giant roach carcass I strategically placed on his tools... That bugger must've been almost 3" long.
Haha! Women and their fear of bugs... ::rolls eyes::
I did meet a guy who screams like a girl over cockroaches. I wonder if he ever noticed the giant roach carcass I strategically placed on his tools... That bugger must've been almost 3" long.
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