eeeeek! - camel Spiders and other creepy critters

April 2, 2003 9:05 AM

The camel spider will call you a slut and make fun of your religion. Not bad enough they have death & destruction and every other war-related hazard, our troops also have to worry about chancing on this nasty creature (quicktime clip). Many of the more terrifying stories are urban legends but personal accounts about these and other desert varmints are still pretty scary. Me, I worry about a spider with a nasty bite that's a little closer to home. (gross out warning!)
posted by madamjujujive (23 comments total)

I thought the camel spider link was a prank until I googled it. Oh My God. Its top speed is 30 miles and hour and it can be 3 feet long. Even if those are half-truths this thing is my nightmare. It's also called a wind scorpion. I keep looking down at my feet, and feeling things on my calves. I have a huge case of the heebie-jeebies right now.

My sister spent a week in the hospital after being bitten by a brown recluse. It was hidden in her luggage; she was visiting someone in Florida and it was inside her pants, on the thigh. She put the pants on and went to a full length mirror. The pants were white and sort of sheer - she saw a big dark bulge in the middle of her thigh. I'll stop now, and fetch mjjj the smelling salts!
posted by iconomy at 9:24 AM on April 2, 2003

Well, I for one am off to fill my bathroom with ice and stand in the tub with my shotgun. And shudder in horror. Lots of horror.
posted by cryosis at 9:43 AM on April 2, 2003

OH MY GOD THAT'S FOUL.

nsf(anyone)
posted by xmutex at 9:49 AM on April 2, 2003

The Straight Dope staff did a recent article debunking some of these legends. Maybe reading this will let you sleep better.
posted by Johnny Assay at 9:57 AM on April 2, 2003

Eeeeeeeww. I should have taken those army-training warnings against the Brown Recluse more seriously.
posted by win_k at 9:59 AM on April 2, 2003

The only know predator (other than mankind) of the camel spider



posted by Trik at 10:19 AM on April 2, 2003

I attribute my many super powers to my brown recluse bite. Got the top of my big toe when I was in my early teens. My parents didn't take me to a doctor ("It's only a spider bite."), so we treated it at home with cotton balls and rubbing alcohol. It got pretty ugly -- a wildlife agent that saw it told me that I'd have to have my foot amputated, and that was a bit frightening. In the end, though, my toe fell off on its own. Just the top, though, like it was filleted. And it's since grown back.

Regeneration. Just one of my superpowers.
posted by ewagoner at 10:23 AM on April 2, 2003 [1 favorite]

I attribute my many super powers to my brown recluse bite

What, you're too good to just use the Earth's yellow sun like the rest of us?
posted by moss at 10:50 AM on April 2, 2003

I knew that this had to be connected to SA somehow... when the AWG blog entry is just copying a forum post... yeah.
posted by Spacelegoman at 11:16 AM on April 2, 2003

I keep looking down at my feet, and feeling things on my calves.

Oh, that was just me. Sorry.
posted by homunculus at 11:16 AM on April 2, 2003

ewagoner: Grossest. Post. Ever.
posted by xmutex at 11:18 AM on April 2, 2003

This is one of the reasons I love NYC. You don't have to put up with all that creepy crawly crap in the concrete jungle.
posted by tomorama at 11:44 AM on April 2, 2003

Fabulous. For the forseeable future I'll be looking behind my back and under the chair for Camel and Brown Recluse spiders.

And those terrible, terrible sider bite photographs. Horrifying, but I couldn't look away. I knew it was wrong, but I just couldn't stop . . .
posted by aladfar at 11:53 AM on April 2, 2003

From the "nasty bite" link: Too bad there is no way to tell if it was the antibiotics or the voodoo that healed the wound.

And what's up with the electrical zapping that the woman did to herself: We didn’t have a modified stun gun so I tried Mark’s muscle zapper unit he uses on a muscle that contracts up. Don’t know if it did any good but turned the voltage up as high as it would go.
posted by moonbiter at 11:59 AM on April 2, 2003

(shudder)
posted by jcruelty at 12:11 PM on April 2, 2003

This is one of the reasons I love NYC. You don't have to put up with all that creepy crawly crap in the concrete jungle.

You're right. Incredibly large poision-resistant rats are far better.
posted by Ogre Lawless at 12:25 PM on April 2, 2003

and for some more straight dope about spider bites from the brown recluse and hobo spiders...
posted by th3ph17 at 12:26 PM on April 2, 2003

[this is good and eeww eeww eeww eeww eeww]
posted by fishfucker at 4:16 PM on April 2, 2003

The Sydney funnelweb will call you a whore and mock your personal appearance. (NSFW)
posted by eddydamascene at 4:27 PM on April 2, 2003

Apparently it's "Eremobates gladiolus" and if you google for that you get "Sun Spider", which is apparently endangered.
posted by Leonard at 6:01 PM on April 2, 2003

ick, ick, ick, iconomy! Is your sister ok now?

Yikes eddydamascene! More on the dread funnelweb spider - those Aussie's have some bad bugs. And it matters not one whit how many thousands of miles away any of these critters are or how much sense johnnyassay and th3ph17 are trying to infuse in this conversation to dispel my hysteria, I am not going to sleep well until I get me one of those predators Trik posted. ...I don't need any super powers that I have to sacrifice a toe to get, thanks.
posted by madamjujujive at 8:03 PM on April 2, 2003

Gotta love the straight dope.. I love their slogan. Always a good read.. and the first link to a blog entry quoting a Something Awful forum goon. Instant karma neg twenty.....
posted by shadow45 at 8:34 PM on April 2, 2003

More stomach-churning aggressive parasite fun.

Madamejujujive: thanks, I think?

*shudder*
posted by hama7 at 1:51 AM on April 3, 2003