Very important public service announcement about spiders (video)

[Video Link]. "A lot of people die. Just so you know."—Dan Lucal. (via Casimir Nozkowski)

Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

MORE: Funny • spiders • video • youtube

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http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=808567714 Erin Rauk

Thank you, Xeni! I had no idea.
LX

…and only very, very few who don’t die yet develop superpowers afterwards :-(
Wreckrob8

Wear sandals.
http://www.youtube.com/user/Freethinkersanon Christopher

Think of the spiders! Won’t someone please, for goodness sake, think of the spiders?
- malindrome
  
  Now that I’ve started thinking about the spiders, it’s kinda hard to think about anything else.
Eark_the_Bunny

Gee, now I am afraid of putting on my shoes. Oh, no! No shoes no service.
- RedShirt77
  
  This is why the shoes without socks is very dangerous. For safety reasons I do recommend socks with all footwear. Think of it as a spider shield.
  - http://lemoutan.blogspot.com/ Lemoutan
    
    No no no. You’ll just start an arms race and the presently tiny population of sock-penetrating spiders will soon dominate.
Boundegar

I am crying so hard, Xeni you ruined my day, and quite possibly my life.
Taeglicher Wahnsinn

Now you know why I never deodorize, disinfect or sanitize my shoes. Nothing like natural stinky sock odor to keep them little buggers away.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  You could just wear clogs made of cedar.
- RedShirt77
  
  You know what else works? Never taking your shoes off until you are ready to buy new ones..
http://twitter.com/strugglngwriter strugglngwriter

Just so you know, people with the very real pipe cleaner phobia should not watch this.
ROSSINDETROIT

If there might be spiders just throw them away and buy new shoes. Take it from us, Adidas. You should do that.
- Wreckrob8
  
  My shoes come packed in a handy cardboard nocturnal spider guard.
kthugha

This is one of the reasons I put up with Minnesota winters. Because most venomous spiders do not.
Preston Sturges

As soon as the guy started talking, I thought “His voice really isn’t that good.”
- Eark_the_Bunny
  
  Well what do you expect from some poor fellow who got bit on the foot by a spider.
chgoliz

Now I’m wondering who I hate enough to send them the link.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  I’ll just leave this here.
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRV4d9LCawU
  - chgoliz
    
    :-) Priceless!
    - Antinous / Moderator
      
      It’s so perfect, particularly the foot in the plastic tub, that it’s hard to believe that it’s not staged.
      - http://plagmada.org Tim H
        
        I do question the wisdom of the guy setting his ladder up in front of the spider, upping the horror if it should run and fall.
  - http://plagmada.org Tim H
    
    I worked in Australia for a month and had to traverse a city park every time I left the decommissioned lunatic asylum I was at. As soon as it was dark webs would pop up between the trees at walking level – webs that were 20′ across easily and contained fist sized spiders. At first I stopped walking off the road because I kept walking into the webs and having spastic dance screaming fits. The webs popped up so quickly, though, that I finally got the point where I would wait for a car to drive along the road and clear the path before I would run the gauntlet. If I grew impatient I had a giant stick I set aside for web clearning purposes, which I would swing continuously up and down.
GlenBlank

When I first visited Arizona, my cousins, whose subdivision bordered untamed desert, told me the same story, featuring scorpions instead of spiders.

I thought they were having me on, but after we moved there, I still spent years shaking out my shoes every morning to make sure there were no scorpions. As time went on, I discovered that it was pretty rare to find scorpions inside suburban houses .

OTOH, as I discovered on a Boy Scout camping trip, it’s still good advice if you leave your shoes sitting out in the open desert. Very few people die from scorpion stings, but they can be very unpleasant – especially the little pale straw-colored ones.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  We get scorpions inside occasionally. Fortunately, ours don’t climb, so keeping your slippers on the bedside table prevents any surprises.
  - Felton / Moderator
    
    I’ve been getting mostly wolf spiders (I think) that like to hang around in obvious areas, like the middle of the kitchen floor or next to the medicine cabinet. I don’t know, maybe I’m supposed to feed them.
    - Mazoola
      
      Yeah, there’s nothing quite like waking to the feeling of a 50-cent-piece-sized wolf spider walking along your arm… unless it’s the sensation of slamming your face into the back of a chair after launching yourself out of the bed upon waking to etc etc
  - GlenBlank
    
    Yep. ”Pretty rare”, but not unheard-of. :-)
    
    We lived three houses away from the city limit, with cotton fields or raw desert beyond. Never found one in my shoe, but did have to escort one back outside a couple of times.
    
    We used to collect them and sell them for 25 cents apiece to a bolo-tie maker. I made rather a haul (for a 10-year-old!) after I discovered that they glow under a battery-powered blacklight. :-)
    - Antinous / Moderator
      
      Palm Springs is a checkerboard of developed land and raw desert, so you’re rarely more than a block away from a scorpion breeding facility. This is a half mile from downtown and across the street from the Convention Center, several mega-hotels and a multiplex, for all your home arachnid needs. I have to say, I’m enjoying the security of second floor living.
awjt

I always doa spdier check ifI leave my
- http://twitter.com/bazimmerman Brad Zimmerman
  
  Looks like you should have checked your keyboard for those small but deadly ones.
Fred Talmadge

When I moved to Texas 20 years ago I was warned that scorpions would do this. I shook out my shoes for a few years but nothing. Now I suppose I’ll be paranoid again for a few years.
HeatherB

Living in the desert and having found both scorpions and spiders in my shoes (one industrious fella even build a web on a sandal) I can tell you the best thing to do is simply place your shoes upside down when not wearing them. Spiders and and scorpions will climb in but do not like to climb up into the shoes. And of course there is always the handy shaking for safety sake but after I started storing them upside down, I never had the issue.
BombBlastLightingWaltz

It could be a lot worse…

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/newzealand/7722296/Tourist-hospitalised-by-venomous-spider-bite-on-penis.html
John Maple

Yet another good reason to carry a firearm . . . Maybe.
Mazoola

You know what else likes warm, dark, damp shoes? Japanese hornets. Fortunately, their sting-y bits tend to be pointed away from one’s foot, so it’s more a case of “huh, what’s that in my shoe? OHMIGOD!! [wham!] [wham!] [wham!]“
goinoutwest

I’m pretty sure that the close-up of the “spider” biting is actually someone’s hairy butt. Just so you know.
Palomino

And people laugh at me for keeping the boxes my shoes come in.