Posted on 08/03/2017 8:25:58 AM PDT by BenLurkin
The Dafferner family received a message Wednesday asking about their eight-legged intruder. They said a 9-year-old girl in the neighborhood is excited to take ownership of the giant spider.
“The private message was ‘can we have it?’ Who am I to say no?" Hannah's mom Alli Dafferner said. "Happily.”
Tarantulas are known to live in San Diego County and throughout Southern California. According to several websites about the eight-legged creature, they are members of Aphonopelma, ground-dwelling hunting spiders.
The California tarantula is nocturnal for most of its life, leaving its hole at night to hunt for beetles, grasshoppers, lizards, mice, scorpions, spiders and other insects. Male tarantulas require 7 to 10 years to mature before emerging to roam the area, looking for females. While the male tarantula only lives a few months after it reaches maturity, females may live up to 25 years.
(Excerpt) Read more at ktla.com ...
>>People who are scared of spiders or snakes are really rather pathetic.<<
Do you include in your “pathetic” list people who are afraid of heights? Needles? Blood?
um... yes...?
Maybe she can teach it to fetch.
Why didn't you just kill them?
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Uh, the spiders...
What are YOU scared of? How about half a nickel in ADOC, we saw snakes and tarantulas on a Daily basis.
Lots of tarantulas on Camp Pendleton. I remember jumping in fox holes and jumping back out. Fox holes on Pendleton are dangerous and it’s not because of the tarantulas. Rattlers and scorpions abound. Tarantulas just wonder around and say hi.
Ha! :-)
>>um... yes...?<<
That is all anyone need know about you. You must be on the wrong board since sneering at others is a liberal trait.
Phobias are quite common and not a sign of weakness.
I see the thought crossed your mind...don’t answer; who knows what they might dig up in the desert in years to come...:-)
The way to get over phobias is to be confronted by them, not to hide from reasonable teasing or criticism, both of which are tools one can use to overcome fears and win back the liberty that the phobia denies you. Everyone has both healthy fears that cause them to think and problem solve, and unhealthy obsessive fears called phobias that replace thinking with emotion...thoughtless overreaction.
Healthy fears keep us from submitting to peer pressure and doing stupid things. But phobias are unreasonable fears that stand in the way of serving fully, and deny us joy, and can even injure a person if the person overreacts, for example, by flailing at a wasp that’s not even interested in them...and falling off a ladder, breaking an arm or leg.
It’s not healthy or merciful or understanding to enable a phobia to ossify and become permanently crippling by enshrining it and defending it. (Not to mention it’s not right to kill living creatures merely because one has a phobia about them.)
I used to have a fear of electrical outlets. Had no idea where that fear came from, and I hid that fear from others lest I be humiliated, of course. But it remained a great weakness for years- if some family member innocently asked me to plug in the vacuum or whatever while they were getting ready to clean, I’d freeze, terrified, and look for an excuse to get away from the responsibility.
Would it have been better if my folks had known and sheltered me from being criticized as lazy, inconsiderate or chicken for ducking out every time someone asked me to plug in a radio or change a light bulb? Momentarily it would have given me relief, but the problem would remain, and worsen, most likely. It was the fear of humiliation by siblings and friends and a desire to keep a good reputation that drove me to confront the irrational fear, study electricity, and get over it.
As old timers say to the young, when you get bucked off a horse, you get right back on it. [Otherwise you have to live in fear.]
I later found out that when learning to walk as a baby I’d grabbed ahold of a plug that was only half stuck in the outlet, which left just enough of the prongs on an extension cord plug exposed for my finger and thumb to close on them and be severely shocked and burned when I couldn’t let go, requiring surgery. I didn’t remember the surgery or the shock, as I suppose it was too traumatic and my mind blocked it all, but I had noticed my zotted digits were a bit deformed and scarred, and eventually asked how that happened. Then it all made sense when I was told. Getting electrocuted as a baby must have been the origin of the phobia that eventually became an inconvenience and embarrassment.
If you have a phobia there very well may be a reason for the “unreasonable fear” buried deep in your past. Explore and find out and “get back on the horse” as soon as you can... and be free of it.
Electrical outlets don’t crawl onto you and bite you.
One can have perfectly rational concerns about spiders that can bite you and even kill you.
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