Breaking Cat News by Georgia Dunn for February 18, 2018

I keep an old Mason jar around to catch spiders and dump them back outside.

There are good and bad, just as with anything else. Bad is brown recluse as it injects a flesh eating substance. It does not like being disturbed, hides in dark spaces and will bite if disturbed. They are known to hide bed pillows. Like women as they have thinner skin(in general) and therefore warmer as easier to bite. Daddylonglegs are beneficials. If you look closely, each has a different design on its back. And, easy to pick up by the legs to carry outside.

I come from a family of non-spider-killers. This is one of my favorite BCNs ever. And I liked it even more when I realized the dangerous spiders were Clue characters. LOL.

Love the spider poster. I laughed when I got it. Anyone who doesn’t, open this thread for answer (spoiler for this strip only, not past ones AFAIK)

Peppa Pig has an episode which teaches not to be afraid of harmless little spiders. Of course it’s banned here in Australia since our spiders are anything but harmless.

Lupin’s tail is whipping about in panel 1. Maybe he doesn’t care much for spiders!

So apparently, the dangerous spiders are the ones who specialize in Clue. Kudos to the Woman for her patience in the wildlife relocation effort!

I will never look at a spider the same way again!

Learn to recognize the species who have venom that has been known to affect humans in an adverse manner. In the USA, this would be the widow species and the recluse species. Learn their habits and webs a bit too. Once you have them down the rest may be identified at leisure. All spiders are 100% beneficial.

I will never look at a spider the same way again.

Another great chart!

Is Elvis helping with the dishes? He’s holding a sponge in frame 4.

I love Pucky’s, “farewell gentle European spider” and how the European spider replies in French

Wow, I love how informative this one is! Thanks Georgia! Look at the detail! Spiders always freak me out but it’s good to know what the dangerous spiders look like.

Clear cup and a piece of card stock is the best way to capture a crawly critter.

Not-so-fun fact about spiders found in the house – most of these spiders don’t survive once released outside. Ah well, at least we tried to help!

Get a Clue, Pucky!

Eh? Eh?

Ah, a new chart! Perfect!

Another wonderful chart presented by Puck and love that the spiders are all Clue characters :)

I’m not a fan of spiders but I generally let them be, we don’t have dangerous ones up here to worry about. The boys on the other hand hunt them down with great vigour, I’ve seen them on tip-toes standing on the top of their cat tree trying to get at spiders on the ceiling

I’m not sure why, but whenever I see a spider, I always have a strong mental image of them speaking in a French or Spanish accent. Not sure why. This is a particularly good example.

If I were to find a spider today, putting it outside would be a dubious kindness, as we had about five inches of snow. But I assume that the indoor spiders are hibernating, or something. Really should read up on what they do.

I hope Puck is right concerning the species. A lot of spiders found inside the house actually have a hard time surviving outside because they have specialized in living in man-made habitats.

Beware of Black Widows with guns.

I can’t believe someone else does this besides me! I like helping them out.

“..the Black Widow in the dining room with the revolver.”

.

@Georgia Dunn

I recognize the Black Widow, of course, but I’m not too sure about the others.

Are the other spiders patterned after real spiders?

Good morning and happy Bunday, gentle fellow BCN orbsters and orbabies! I, too, suffer from arachnophobia. To prevent a panic attack, Paul will take the spider and put it outside; neither of us knew, until today, that this could prove fatal to the spider. Paul will also shoo bees and wasps back outside. Yum Yum brings grasshoppers and crickets in to us in the summer so we can praise her hunting prowess.

Cool… today’s Cul de Sac is the one where I got Sooti’s name from.

http://www.gocomics.com/culdesac?ct=v&cti=1963481

No way you’ll ever do a spider extraction using a spatula. A clear cup and postcard: that’s the ticket!

And just for the record … As long as it’s not a black widow or similar threat to human — or tiny tigger — life (pretty much all spiders are venomous), there’s really no reason why it can’t remain indoors.

Clue spiders! Clue is my favorite game. I recently got my sons, 7 & 11 playing. We have 3 different versions of the clue game now. I love this!

At least it wasn’t a flattie spider. They’re not dangerous, but they are freaky and fast.

The dangerous spiders holding weapons is a cute touch

This is one of Georgia’s greatest. It’s a BWAHAHAHA! And is filled with so much wonderful detail, and real knowledge. Like many here, I loved that they were Clue characters. I didn’t know that people even played Clue anymore. I think the guy with the wrench might be a crab spider. They’re the huge ones that hang out on the ceiling. My three cats love all spiders as potential prey. They got to a particularly large crab spider once and took off one leg… then the next day another leg… leaving the spider with six legs. He seemed to get around okay, even so, but as he was now six-legged I thought of him as an insect.

The reason for moving spiders outside is to keep the inside population manageable. Spiders are some of the most savagely aggressive predators. They are not only venomous, but their fangs are frequently very “dirty” and covered in bacteria. Any spider will try to bite if it feels threatened, and even the “non-dangerous” ones can give bites that remain bothersome (or are infected) for weeks.

Those large enough to catch are usually escorted outside, except for the small, jumping “wolf” spiders, which we leave. They seem more intelligent and are rarely bothersome. Outside, we even try to avoid damaging spider webs. Anything that eats flies and mosquitoes is good!

Have you ever encountered a new hatch of tiny spiders? They are like a horde of miniature, voracious mosquitoes, biting anything they come in contact with (including each other).

arachnophobe here. After years of medication I can exist, somewhat calmly, knowing that spiders are in my house… somewhere. But they need to stay away from me. Putting one outdoors? Not happening. It would run right up that spatula kill me before I could get to the door. (Don’t be bugging me with facts about how they aren’t venomous.. that’s not how phobias work. Phobias don’t care about facts). However, I will just about any other kind of insect. Especially bees.

So, dangerous spiders yield the weapons from Clue?

Ohh, ninjapedes! Worse than army worms are the ninjapedes.

https://nerdist.com/lucas-animated-spider-disney-video/

Years ago, one of my girls tried to eat a spider and it bit her inside her mouth. She spit it out and never went after another one.

I live in a house that was built in 1902. It is a sieve. The spider population is fairly invisible but does the job. I seldom see insects unless the insects are particularly out of control. Like stink bugs. They drive me batty. I like spiders. They are my friend in the battle against stink bugs (beetles?)

I love the little, “Hey girl!” greeting from the spider. That was the way my best friend always greeted me when I answered her phone calls. We were first met when I was 3 and she was 5. I was maid of honor at her wedding. She passed away two months to the day after Jasper did—2016 was a very bad year.

It is the SPIDER WAY! LOL!

Oh Georgia! Thank you to the moon and back for the nod to CLUE! My cousin Linda and I watched that movie and played that game more times than I can count. I miss her terribly (she passed very suddenly and unexpectedly in 2016) and reading your strip today felt like she popped in to say hello. I can’t tell you how much I needed that today. So thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Here in North West Tucson we have wolf spiders that become very big. More scary that harmful. Giant Trantulas are a protected species & are mild mannered. However when I was a Ft. Sill training in 1959, I didn’t care much for them crawling over my sleeping bag & face when we had to camp out.

ANY spider in my house is killed on sight.

They are allowed on my greenery OUTSIDE but are not allowed anywhere inside my house.

I really had a YUCK!!! response to today’s panel.

I must admit, this is the first (and only) BCN I didn’t like.

Over on BCN website, Georgia listed what the spiders are. She said she put them in to help people identify them. “Georgia Dunn Studio Top, left to right: Brown recluse, yellow sac, black widow. Bottom: Wandering spider, wolf spider, funnel spider.”

Early one morning, a few years ago, I noticed a black splotch on my wall above my sofa. It was a tarantula the size of my hand. And my first thought was that I needed coffee to deal with this. So after a cup of caffeine, I emptied a wastebasket, knocked the tarantula into it and carried it a block away to an empty lot where I hoped it could make a living. I’ve since read that spiders such as tarantulas will start checking out houses to have a warm place to spend the winter.

I carefully catch & release every ant, ladybug, beetle, stinkbug, mouse etc but the spiders get whacked with a fly swatter. I know they mean well and they can’t help how evil they look but I’m extremely arachnophobic!

Nopeity nope nope!

Just got back from another trip to our farmhouse project. There are enough large spiders in that basement to film another Arachnophobia movie. We’ve got Parson spiders that the body with legs out are the same circumference of a coffee cup, Wolf spiders the same size as my hand or bigger, and Fishing spiders that are bigger than my hand. We’re trying to give them eviction notices. You know you’ve got huge spiders when you sit on the porch and notice the grass moving, and look down and see one of those huge Wolf spiders walking through. The orb weavers outside don’t bother me, but having several of those big suckers come scrambling out as we remove junk can give you a case of the willy’s.

I convinced my wife to save the spiders and put them outdoors. If you know they are there right in front of you, even the poisonous ones are not a danger, they won’t jump up and bite you like a snake. We entice them to a flat area, then put a clear plastic cup over them, sometimes they will jump up on the insides of the cup if you take your hand away. Then carefully slip a stiff piece of paper underneath and then pick it up keeping the paper tight to the cup. Don’t pinch their legs when you do this. We then transport them to the nearest door and let them loose. Sometimes we have to just set the paper down because they won’t move right away, others scurry the hell out of there.

I had a cat that liked to eat spiders! He would hunt them down, paw at them, torture them and then eat them up. The crunching and popping sounds were troublesome to my ears!

Am I the only one upset by the image of her throwing the spider? I don’t really like the look of spiders or the way they move, but I do try to save them. This spider is definitely dead.

I have a wool spider named Baxter. He is currently on the bookshelf because his gigantic web fell down. (And no one has bothered to put it back up)

OH HECK NO THE BLACK WIDOW HAS A GUN

I’ve always understood that wolf spiders aren’t particularly harmful. The lovely thing about them is that the mama wolf spider carries her hatchlings on her back!

So here is my story. Lo these many years ago when my husband was still alive & we had a tiny baby, one night I was in the bed with a nightlight on about to nurse the baby while my husband was in the next room watching tv. Suddenly in the dim light I saw something the size of a large cockroach run across the bed & squeaked for my husband! He came in and, without turning on the main light, smacked the intruder with his open palm flat onto the bed.

And teeny tiny things went racing everywhere! I leapt from the bed with babe in arms while my husband turned on the light. And we discovered the supposed cockroach was actually a mama wolf spider. The teeny baby wolfies were running away in all directions! Sadly, mama wolfie was caput. Shortly the babies were gone who-knows-where. I felt so bad for the mama & her dozens of orphans.

Moral of the story: turn on the light before you swat!

Ewwwwwwwww spider! Cartoon spiders are okay and even cute, but real ones are creepy!

Was it Professor Mustard with the noose in the kitchen, or Black Widow with the pistol in the ballroom?