Dark Side of the Horse by Samson for March 15, 2024

Sing-along time: “Spider-Man, Spider-Man, does whatever his dinner can . . .”

bird’s a joker today ;+)

Poor humans? Poor spiders!!!

That explains a lot.

I didn’t meet my quota of spiders this year.

I wonder if mouthwash will cure morning spider breath?

So that’s what they do during sleep studies, huh

Not true.

How did some researcher even come up with such an unverifiable claim?

Smart paneling by smart placement of trees.

Oh the horror!! Will no one think of the spiders?!?!

even more reason not to snore…

I knew an old lady who swallowed 8 spiders. She swallowed 8 spiders to catch 8 flies. I don’t know why she swallowed 8 flies – Perhaps she dies.

Maybe they are kamikaze spiders.

I only swallow the delicious kind.

Horace doesn’t seem to care Mr Sine… Guess he hasn’t had his coffee yet…!

I’ve read that if people knew how many spiders crawl on them while they are asleep they would never go to bed.

I don’t harm my local spiders, and they — in turn — don’t do anything to bother me.

Horace, have you ever counted spiders for sleeping?

Eeew! Now I got the heeeejeebees!

Next thing you know, there’ll be spiders in Horace’s elevator.

And other scientists watching them.

Welp, there won’t be any counting sheep tonight, huh Horace!

You can tape your mouth closed to keep ‘em out, but remember… don’t tape your nose this time.

“they say” is not the best citation

I’m thinking it has to be better than the other way around. :)

There was an old lady who swallowed a spider—

“So what?” you might say. “That’s the norm.

When we’re sleeping, we swallow four spiders a year,

If not more.” That’s a practical swarm.

The usual estimate’s probably eight,

But it sometimes goes up to a pound

In a lifetime, which means 20,000 all told

At a frequency rather profound.

I’ve happily read that the actual average

Person is swallowing none.

It’s tricky to sleep with eight legs on your face,

And why go for your mouth? It’s not done.

The legend might trace to the ‘50s or sooner.

It’s said to have had a revival,

Ironically thanks to a list of known myths,

Being spread with the Web’s great arrival.

—me

The webs stick to the roof of your mouth… like peanut butter :-)

I thought we only had to worry about tarantulas in bunches of bananas.

An age-old urban myth. For a sleeping person to swallow even one live spider would involve so many highly unlikely circumstances that for all practical purposes, it isn’t possible. No such instance has ever been reported in any reputable scientific or medical literature.

Do they have pumpkin spice spiders?

It’s no wonder I’m gaining weight.

7 Billion humans on this planet and we only swallow 8 spiders while asleep? That’s nearly a one-in-a-billion event.

No problem sleeping with those numbers.

ever wake up with a string in your mouth and 8 tickles in your throat

to the scientists conducting this and many other experiments, just because you can doesn’t mean you should

That research presumes that spiders are dumb enough to enter noisy, moist, moving, holes with teeth….. And so slow they get caught. Neither of which fits the spiders that hang out in my house.

I couldn’t do that if I tried, let alone in my sleep.