Aus. - After the fire - DEADLY SPIDERS!

[The Snark]

I'm not going to even bother putting a link in to the sensationalist media trying to garner attention at the expense of the fauna of Australia right now. Of course, this stuff is inevitable, victimizing animals to gain a momentary uptick in their viewer ratings.

Yes, Aus has some extremely venomous animals and they may be out roaming after the floods and fires. But please try to keep things in context. Let the statistics speak for themselves.
You have several thousand times greater chance of being badly injured or killed in a motor vehicle accident than getting a medically significant spider bite. And about a 5 times greater chance getting struck by lightning.

 

[Dennis Nedry]

Even more ridiculous when this “plague of deadly spiders” is something that occurs every year. Male funnel webs walking around is nothing new

 

[The Snark]

We need a catch and release program for sensationalist reporters: their next assignment becoming monitoring melt rates on the Ross ice shelf.

Even more ridiculous when this “plague of deadly spiders” is something that occurs every year. Male funnel webs walking around is nothing new

And in the process of warily watching for the romantically inclined males, missing almost everything else. I'm reminded of a nature group I packed into the mountains to search out the wily rattlesnake. They ranged over about 100 acres and found 2. A month later we had a biologist stake out a 100 foot by 100 foot area and spend 3 weeks going over it. Found and catalogued over 300 animals.

 

[Ungoliant]

Fire spiders are a serious threat. They could evolve into lavalantulas.

 

[FrDoc]

Fire spiders are a serious threat. They could evolve into lavalantulas.

It could happen...

 

[The Snark]

Deep philosophy. I rhetorically asked the computer and the walls, 'Why is it so hard to get people to get a grip on reality?'
My pard from the doorway took the bait and answered, 'Remember that spider on your monitor?'.
A perfect analogy. A jumper had spent the entire evening trying to get at whatever was playing on Youtube. No convincing it of the reality.

Silliness
A few days ago at my wife's work a guest went freak out. A spider in her room. Wifey took a break from her office duties, went to the room, snatched up the lovely sparassid, put it on her head (better than a catch cup for those speedsters) then went back to her business. Several guests went into serious histrionics. One guest went so far as to call up her boss and tell him she was checking out of the room and she wouldn't go into the office since the secretary was crazy and had a spider. Boss went to my wifes office. Spider nowhere to be seen. Wife acting perfectly innocent. I dropped by to take wife to lunch. We returned to discover the spider was inspecting the paperwork on the desk. I admired the spider for a moment while wife ignored it and went back to work. She later reported it spent the entire afternoon being QA paperwork inspector as it ranged over her desk. Turned out it was much more effective at keeping people out of her office than her boss's moody growly 120 lb Alsatian that had a long track record of biting people..

 

[RezonantVoid]

Males have had a rough hit these last few months. My only hope is the lack of rain may have delayed the breeding season until after the fires passed but not that it matters anyway because now they are probably all drowing in flash floods. This is the most insane weather ive not only ever experienced here, but heard of occurring here

 

[Quetzalcoatl Nyarlathotep]

It's so sad to see a tragedy turn into a catastrophe. Those poor spiders are just trying to find somewhere safe and these arachnophobe b******* keep killing them. Makes me want to beat their heads in with a lead pipe.