Don't tangle with a Redback

[Platypus]

(A Redback is an Australian relative of the Black Widow spider)

I opened my shed door today, been shut up for a few weeks, and found a female Redback spider sitting in her web waiting for her egg sac to hatch. Bound up handily close to the sac was a rather larger hunting spider:

http://server3.uploadit.org/files/platypus-Spider2.jpg

[NooNoo]

OK... this sounds like the first part of the story...
What happened next?

[Platypus]

What happened next?
Umm, I killed the Redback & loaded clothes into the dryer... :D

[street1]

Good man!!! Then what ???

[NooNoo]

Details man, details! What did you kill it with and how? Enquiring minds want to know... also what clothes did you dry and did you have to iron them?

[Platypus]

Details man, details! What did you kill it with and how?

Well, when I decided to get the camera, I picked up a can of Baygon Odourless Crawling Insect Surface Spray, snapped the shot then made a sweeping spray from right to left to include the egg sac. The spider was surprised. Then it died. I wasn't surprised.

also what clothes did you dry and did you have to iron them?

Iron them? Never! I'm a man... (All right, I do iron hankies for me old Mum... )

There was a week's day clothes, a bath towel and some diabetic's socks Mum doesn't want washed in the Aged Care Facility laundry. I was drying clothes in summer because we had a day and a half of much needed rain - hooray! I used the Normal Temperature Auto Sensing cycle.

[NooNoo]

sugar free socks? Now there's an invention!!

So did you just leave that dead, slighty soggy spider just hanging... as a warning to others perhaps?

Good grief man, it's like getting blood out of a stone...!

[Platypus]

The socks are guaranteed sugar-free.

As for the surprised and probably not sugar-free spider, it rappelled down to the concrete below and flailed about. Being a merciless Platypus, I left it there and fed the drier. The mummified hunting spider remains, like the shrivelled corpse suspended in a giant spider's web that terrified wanderers stumble into in Sci-Fi Horror movies.

[NooNoo]

/drags Platypus back to the thread again....
And what about the egg sac? Will they be orphans? Will you setup a motion sensitive camera and film their progress?

[Platypus]

Will you setup a motion sensitive camera and film their progress?
Only if I can get funding for "The Return of the Undead Spider Orphans"

[El_Squid]

Excellent yarn, or is it thread?

Anyway, I am partial to the IFTD (Improvised Flame Throwing Device) hairspray/cigarette lighter combo. A hangover from my Military Academy days when we used those to fry the wings off of wasps, without killing them, which left you with a nasty little surprise to put in someone's shoes, or under their sheets. :devil:

[CCT]

The weird duck posted "I opened my shed door today, been shut up for a few weeks" - NOW! It is the dead of winter here in Canukistan, so that means it is the middle of summer there in Platypus country.

So how do you manage to go weeks without entry to your shed?

Are you a malingerer? A chore dodger? A yard destroyer? A plaque on your neighbourhood?

[Platypus]

So how do you manage to go weeks without entry to your shed?

The shed has two doors... :)

A chore dodger?
Definitely! But weeks of hot and dry means no need for dryer or lawnmower.

A plaque on your neighbourhood?
A plaque? Well, nail me to the wall and cut the ribbon... :D

[Platypus]

Excellent yarn, or is it thread?
So, I cotton on to you, trying to weave puns into the fabric of the matter. The wasp is warped and crewel, but a pile of laughs...

[NooNoo]

Yah, but it was me that stretched the thread out a bit, getting Platypus to tie up the loose ends and so on...spinning a yarn is usually his forte :D