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Ackpth! and other onomatopoeias

Posted: Wed Aug 05, 2009 9:03 pm
by D.B.
I woke up at 5am this morning to discover a large spider* sitting on my face.

It was quite an unusual experience. Most interesting was that there was no intermediate state that I was aware of between sleep, and being completely awake and aware of exactly what it was. I'm usually quite slow and befuddled when woken by something unfamiliar, and take a few seconds to figure out who I am, let alone what's woken me. In this case though it was almost like my brain had been puzzling over it while I slept, realised what was going on, and then flipped some internal switch from 'sleep' to 'wake' while at the same time loading a little onStartup message into my consciousness saying 'there is a big spider on your face'. I find myself wondering if there's some evolutionary reason behind it, a little like I've heard there is evidence of an ability to rapidly detect snakes.

On the bright side, I'm never going to worry that spiders might creep over me in the night. If they do, I'll know  :)




*Quite how large is hard to say. At the time it looked huge, but perspective does that. It was large enough to make an audible noise when I grabbed it and threw it at the wall.

Re: Ackpth! and other onomatopoeias

Posted: Wed Aug 05, 2009 9:08 pm
by AssistantCrone
If it's any consolation, your onomatopoeia was probably minimal compared to the spider's "Oh fuck oh fuck it's consc*splat*".

I once had to move downstairs for the night after being unable to catch a large spider in my bedroom (I called it Neil). Spiders are very neat, but each of my nostrils was just the right size to accommodate it in comfort.

Re: Ackpth! and other onomatopoeias

Posted: Wed Aug 05, 2009 10:01 pm
by Andreas
Great, now I can't sleep tonight. :o  I saw one rather large of those very thin Pholcidae (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pholcidae) at the ceiling a couple of days ago, but was gone the next morning - most likely hidden in some corner now. The closest one came to my bed that I was aware of was one sitting on my pillow when I got to bed. Fortunately, I discovered it early enough...
* Andreas hates spiders and all other critters with more than four legs, maybe except butterflies, ladybugs and bumblebees...

Re: Ackpth! and other onomatopoeias

Posted: Wed Aug 05, 2009 10:23 pm
by AssistantCrone
Not to make this thread all about spiders, but for those of you who haven't seen it, here's an old experiment involving spiders on drugs.

Re: Ackpth! and other onomatopoeias

Posted: Wed Aug 05, 2009 11:25 pm
by c_nordlander
I saw this one!
Spoiler

Re: Ackpth! and other onomatopoeias

Posted: Wed Aug 05, 2009 11:55 pm
by Officer 1BDI
Eurgh! *shudder*  I don't mind spiders when they're outside... or in a place I can catch them and subsequently transfer them outside, but waking up to one on my face would be too much.  I think my worst spider experience happened last spring: I was driving to class and I saw something out of the corner of my eye.  I glanced down just in time to see a ruddy spider emerging from my CD player, and then the damn thing started crawling all over the dashboard.  Luckily I'd stopped to get donuts not five minutes earlier, so I was able to grab a napkin and kill the thing before it crawled on my wheel and I flipped out and swerved into incoming traffic, but eurgh.

Re: Ackpth! and other onomatopoeias

Posted: Thu Aug 06, 2009 12:19 am
by SirMustapha
I've grown a little bit partial towards spiders after the episode of Charlie and Lola, in which the titular Charlie argues how scary she, all big and hairy, may look to a spider, and then they show a cutscene of a spider sitting on a web, sipping tea and reading the news, and then getting freaked out of his mind by Lola's enormous face and booming voice. But waking up with one on my face would be a bit too much.

Worst thing that happened to me similar to that involved a cockroach, which fell on my eye and quickly crawled under my sheets when I was trying to sleep. It was dark, though, and I was only able to see what it was when I felt something rub against my leg and got up to turn on the light.

One funny thing that happened a while ago was when I was dreaming with a flying cockroach, and then I had the clearest illusion of it "zooming out" of the dream and landing on my bed. I jumped out and turned on the light, to see if there was indeed a real roach there, and needed about two minutes to convince myself that there wasn't.

Re: Ackpth! and other onomatopoeias

Posted: Thu Aug 06, 2009 1:30 am
by Sheana_Molloy
There are tarantulas where I currenly live. My dad saw one by his car a few weeks ago and said it was easily the size of his hand, maybe bigger.

I don't like going outside much.

Re: Ackpth! and other onomatopoeias

Posted: Thu Aug 06, 2009 2:36 am
by Stretch_Dude
Well, this thread has certainly given me the heebie-jeebies.

Re: Ackpth! and other onomatopoeias

Posted: Thu Aug 06, 2009 10:05 am
by c_nordlander
I like spiders (the critters I have problems with are the ones that have too few legs, not too many)*, but having things scuttling around your room at night isn't fun.

*Snakes, worms and grubs of various descriptions. I don't mind snails or slugs, oddly enough, except when they get inside the house. Or fish. Or humans.

Re: Ackpth! and other onomatopoeias

Posted: Thu Aug 06, 2009 10:31 am
by archonix
I like spiders too because of various natural thingies but I also hate them. Why? Same reason I hate all of nature. It never says thanks when you try and help it. Take yesterday, I was moving some stones around and spotted a spider sitting on one which would have got squashed if I'd put it down. So, being the kid soul I am, I try to brush it away, gently like. The damn thing exploded all over my hand. It was definitely alive because it walked around the stone before I did this. That's gratitude for you... The other reason I don't like nature is because of the fact that it's been trying to kill us since we first crawled out of the water. Perhaps it's payback time.

Whee!

Posted: Thu Aug 20, 2009 3:36 pm
by AssistantCrone
I dreamt that I had rocket boots. Unfortunately, I used them mainly to grab inaccessible gardening equipment from the garage. Still, rocket boots!

Come to think of it, they looked more like rocket wellingtons...

Gotcha!

Posted: Sun Aug 23, 2009 2:29 pm
by D.B.
Found the bugger last night. Turned on the lights as I got in, looked at my wondow, and initially thought someone had broken it. Then when the door slammed shut the ''cracks'' moved further into the corner... An involved game of cat and mouse followed as I tried to get  a pint glass over it without trapping any of its legs or letting it get away behind the bed. Ballsy little bugger too - just as likely to run at the glass as retreat. Anyway, won in the end, and the spider now has a new home in the garden, far away from me  :)

Re: Ackpth! and other onomatopoeias

Posted: Sun Aug 23, 2009 3:50 pm
by SirMustapha
Three vivas for the non-violent solution! Just hope your leggy new friend won't be back tonight for another round. :)

Re: Ackpth! and other onomatopoeias

Posted: Sun Aug 23, 2009 4:03 pm
by AssistantCrone
Congratulations!