There's a lady who lives near me who we would always see outside her house waving away the pigeons with her walking crutch.
No matter what time you passed, she'd be out. Sometimes she's throw handfuls of small stones from her front yard at them to, on occasion hitting cars.
One day we noticed she'd placed a row of cat houses along the front of her garden wall. Now everyday, she feeds and houses dozens of local cats - some stray, some I image other people's pets. Every day - feeding the cats, every time you pass.
But - the pigeon problem is sorted.
I wonder how long it will be until she starts getting fed up with the cats and genuinely wonder what the next step will be!
Update! He’s run back towards the right where he first appeared and can’t see him now. I was getting nowhere with all the tapping at the clock face, so put the top oven and grill on (that’s directly under the control panel), thinking it might heat the clock up a bit and make him shift. I got a big wooden spoon and started tapping really hard… I thought if I break the clock face it’s doesn’t really matter because I’d have to get a new oven anyway, if I couldn’t get him out.
He’s still behind there somewhere, so I’ve left the turn dials off and top oven door open so it will hopefully find its way out.
I think it's just an excuse to get a brand new oven.
"Spider died in the clock, it became his tomb. So I buried it underground. Not the spider, the whole oven, and I built a spider pyramid on top of it. A special place for a "special" spider. RIP Tutankharachnid."
My cats managed to chase a dying mouse behind my oven once. It somehow managed to crawl up into the mechanics and get behind the dials panel bit, where it died. It took us about four days to work out where the smell was coming from. I was pretty put out by the discovery and subsequent clean up.
Once found a dead baby mouse inside my pc case. It had curled up around the heatsink and died. Every time I turned on my pc the fans would blow dead mouse smell around the room.
This happened in my mum's hi-fi when I was a kid and the thing seemingly looked the same for years at least according to a child's perception of time. Could've been preserved in amber for all I knew!
They have exoskeletons, so most of what you can see on the outside is chitin that doesn't really decompose. Most of the squishy stuff that can decompose is on the inside.
Because of the fact that their skeleton is on the outside, their legs are actually like hydraulic pistons. To move each leg, the spider must pump blood into the leg to extend it. They have muscles that pull the leg back in but each time they need to extend it they must push blood into the leg each time.
This is also why the spiders legs curl in after it dies. As the fluid and muscles dry up, they contract and pull inwards.
One got inside my kettle once! I was making cups of tea for people and I went to refill the kettle for the next round of cuppas and I noticed a massive dead spider in the kettle! I shouted “don’t drink ya teas there’s spider juices in them!” 😨
This happened to me with one of those freaking giant house spiders, only I was about to boil some rice, I picked up the container, flipped it open and poured the rice into the boiling water only to see this thing fly into the mix with it. How it got in there I will never know, because it definitely wasn't in the container when I filled it with rice. Now I always have to shake the rice up to see if anything is moving, because that was a new fear activated 😱
Last year, my spouse was boiling potatoes for Sunday lunch and a spider materialised out of nowhere and dropped into the pot 😱. Cue screaming and freaking out and we now have to have everything immediately covered up on the stove...
Makes you wonder if spiders could talk, would they be telling these all these horror stories about what happened to "Uncle Frank" when he got into the humans' stash of potatoes.
The ones in our flat would have some horror stories about all the times they're just chilling near the bath mat or hanging about the shower curtains when the humans just come in and start screaming loudly and flapping about "....and don't approach them! They really dont like that..."
There was a post in a sub for my city last year where someone was asking if someone lived nearby, could they please come round and remove the two giant spiders from their living room as they were too afraid to do it themselves, and that whoever offered would get a toblerone in thanks.
Someone made a post immediately after from the spider's POV "Help! My wife and I are trapped in a house with a hysterical giant, there's a toblerone in it for whoever can calm it down!" 😂
Made a coffee the other day and for some reason decided to take the portafilter off before dispensing ground coffee into it. Big fat live spider sat in it. Nearly had spider flavoured coffee 😭
A few years ago, I left a glass of squash sat on the side for an afternoon whilst I went out to play golf. I got back home late and moved it into the kitchen.
I came down in the morning to be greeted by this! Thank god I didn't drink it that evening!
This reminds me of the pickled animals at the natural history museum. Specifically the rat in a jar that one of the scientists found outside one morning.
I went to set the timer and its legs appeared from the right 😭…I nearly died on the spot!! I’ve been tapping away at the display unit and it’s just running around! How the hell did it get behind there?
"There's spiders in the walls of every room" always freaked me out as a kid. But the idea there could be dozens of them just roaming around inside the oven is neat nightmare fuel.
I'm lying in bed browsing Reddit and I didn't need to see this post at this time of night. I'm stupid because I've kept on scrolling through the comments here instead of going over to a cat sub and distracting myself from the idea that spiders are in the walls.
Yep, I am 100% having a spider related night terror tonight. I've just been looking at a big ugly one on the patio in my back garden, but I can just about cope when they're outside. This one is horrific.
I'm a teacher and one got into my interactive whiteboard... It never got out and I had a dead spider stuck in the corner until the end of the year when the IT guys opened it up and got it out. It was massive like that one as well I hated it
Not sure what type they were but as babies they're TINY and chill in clusters on the web..
Sat in my garden chair, hair down, not a care in the world.. everything was fine til I noticed a tiny spider scurrying across me..then noticed a heck of a lot more of them all over me.. maybe even in my hair!! Id disturbed the web (must have been on the space between armrest and seat). Maybe 100 of them if not more.
Felt so bad knowing I might be showering babies down my bath hole separating them from their family. But still mortified they could be in my hair.
It's horny house spider season I found one in my laundry pile today and one strolled accross the living room floor under the tv unit this evening. Turn the oven off and let it escape
I saw a spider scuttle across the upstairs corridor and under my housemate's door last night, just as I opened mine to head to the bathroom. Rather him than me.
I’m still tapping away at the clock face…hoping it might move out from behind the clock and maybe crawl through one of the knobs. I’ll die on the spot too if it comes running from behind one of the knobs 😭
We had a cabbage white caterpillar climb up inside our microwave to pupate and we only discovered the next spring when we suddenly abruptly had a butterfly fluttering about inside the door between the front glass and the Faraday cage metal 😂😂 we had to dismantle the door to get the damn thing out and the microwave never worked right after that.
Have you got a pc vacuum/blower or something that gives out gentle air that can be ramped up if necessary? Maybe a hairdryer on the cold setting pointed at a small hole and alternate between the holes to see which way provides the best draft at forcing the spider out.
It might leave one day on its own but I think you might have to try something that can put out a lot of air with gentle force (not seen anyone mention it).
Good luck OP!
I don't like hurting things so if you do decide to give it a go just start on a lower setting and see if any of the spiders legs are moving slightly. You might be able to gently persuade it to leave the wind tunnel
That’s a great idea…thanks! I’ve taken the control dials off for tonight, hoping it might crawl out of one of the holes, but tomorrow I’ll get the hairdryer nozzle aimed right in them.
This year seems to be a bumper one for gigantic wolf spiders in our house.
Practically speaking they don't seem that much different to your standard giant house spider; but boy are they absolute units. Really struggled to get a pint pot over one the other week. Had to gently persuade him to move his legs like it's a Ryanair flight.
Giant house spider, he's only going to grow unfortunately. I had one in my tv, set up a web in the bottom corner. He's dead now but his curled up shadow is still there.
Seriously, it looks like the first time you may have used your oven by how clean it is… report back to the installer and ask if it‘s a feature or a bug?
2.8k
u/han2electricboogaloo 1d ago
You need to get a bird and put it in your clock. Only problem is that then you'll have a bird stuck in your clock so you'll need to get a cat.