Geriatric OE

The weekly musing of a couple of Kiwis on their geriatric OE in The UK






Tuesday, 14 August 2012

Creepie Crawlies...


This morning The man and I left for work a bit later than usual. He had an appointment with the dentist to have a broken tooth looked at. Even so I still had time to chat to my son on line I’ve written before about spending time in my favourite coffee shop Starbucks. OK I don’t go for the coffee, rather the free internet access.
My son and I share a somewhat eccentric sense of humour and he was telling me about how having discovered that one of his female workmates, who has an arachnoid fear, he left a large and hairy toy spider on the driver’s seat. ‘Better look out’ I typed in message to him ‘they might figure out it was you’. ‘Oh, he replied, ‘they know it’s me alright’. It reminded me of a couple of arachnoid stories of my own.
One fine sunny day I was out in the back garden weeding. Kneeling on the path to get closer to the garden when a small eight legged critter climbed up onto my leg. I don’t know what my response to it was but I do clearly remember my then four year old son raising his hand and bringing it down splat, spreading the innocent spider across my thigh.
So you can tell from that, that I don’t mind some spidees. Small ones are Ok, but big ones are another kettle of fish, or should I say web of spiders.  Which leads me on to the next story.  The Man and I had not long moved into a house we had bought, and like you do we wanted to stamp our mark on it, well at least on the garden. So there I was digging out the previous owners attempt at a rock garden when I disturbed a huge nest of rather large black funnel web spiders. Needless to say it was down tools and no more work in the garden for me that day I can tell you.
Which reminds me of another creepy crawly encounter in the garden.  I’d grown a nice crop of lettuces and wen t out to get one to make a nice fresh salad. Mmm I think I’ll have that one. So hand underneath it and lift it out of the ground. I transferred the greenery to my other hand so that I could cut the root off and there in my hand that had been holding it was a very large weta! Lettuce went one way, weta the other, and would you believe that I've never pulled a lettuce up like that again!
 

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