ArachnoPhoebia

Recently eaten: beef stew, cheeseburger, egg salad
Recent annoyance: wireless routers

**WARNING: This post contains a frighteningly disturbing arachnid pic. Those with high blood pressure, low IQs or a tendency towards hysteria should not scroll to the bottom of the page**

Well, at least the spiders are gone
"A German woman laid waste to her family home by setting fire to it as she tried to kill spiders in a garage with a can of hairspray and a cigarette lighter.

Police in the western town of Zuelpich said that when the aerosol failed to finish them off, the 34-year-old woman tried to burn them with the lighter. However, this set the area she had just sprayed on fire and the blaze spread to a hedge.

“It was a series of unfortunate events which led to the damage,” a police spokesman said on Thursday."

If nothing else, those Germans are damned efficient.

The reaction sounds overboard, but maybe the woman was up against the camel spider. Here are some totally false facts about camel spiders that most people believe:

• Camel spiders can grow to be as large as dinner plates.

• Camel spiders can traverse desert sand at speeds up to 25 MPH, making screaming noises as they run.

• Camel spiders can jump several feet in the air.

• Camel spiders eat the stomachs of camels and lay their eggs there, hence the name "camel spider." (Legend includes the detail that camel spiders eat camel stomachs from either the outside in or the inside out. In the former case they supposedly jump up from the ground and grab onto camels' bellies from underneath; in the latter case exactly how spiders allegedly as large as dinner plates get into camels' stomachs intact remains unexplained.)

• Camel spiders are venomous, and their venom contains a powerful anesthetic that numbs their victims (thus allowing them to gnaw away at living, immobilized animals without being noticed). U.S. soldiers were said to have been attacked by camel spiders at night but remained completely unaware of their plight until they awakened in the morning to find chunks of their flesh missing.

Also floating out in the urban legend pool, camel spiders will eat your babies, steal your identity, and give you heartburn.