Don’t kill spiders

You never know what might happen if you do.

Like when Brent Askwith sprayed a spider with spider killing spray until it was really, really dead.

And caused a parasitic nematode to hastily evacuate its host:

From The Huffington Post:

That “alien worm” is actually a parasitic nematode, also known as a roundworm. While the nematode in the YouTube video is larger than most, Harvard University entomologist Dr. Brian Farrell told The Huffington Post that every human is infested with thousands of tiny nematodes.

“Most have no obvious effect on us, and we are mostly unaware of their presence,” he wrote in an e-mail, “but a few are large enough to cause diseases such as trichinosis.”

I think it’s really cool, but that’s because I love parasites and intestinal worms and stuff. You?
No, you’re going to have nightmares about this. What has been seen cannot be unseen.

So next time you find a rain spider in your house, don’t kill it to death, because then the scary worm will come after you.

Remember, you would be sleeping soundly tonight if Brent had simply released the spider into his garden. (Or if you hadn’t read this post).

Zoom

My connection woes continue. No WWW. No phone.

Thank goodness for my tablet’s 3G connection, to which I’m currently tethered. (Not literally.)

I’m still feeling horribly out of touch though, so I thought I’d chuck in a quota photo while my plate is incubating in the lab.

Yes, rather overexposed, but I still love the colours and the concentration on my boy’s face.

This was taken at Bugz Family Playpark in Joostenbergvlakte last month on, as the exposure suggests, a very bright and sunny day.
I’d thoroughly recommend the place if you have kids below the age of about 8 or 9. Great fun.

You can see more photos from that day (and indeed that month) here.

Fireworks

Ah. I miss the UK on November 5th. Specifically the fireworks. Yes, they do them here, but for all the mocking of “The Nanny State” on “Mud Island”, the rules here around fireworks are far tighter than in the UK. And, surprisingly for SA, they are generally pretty well observed.

The Isle of Man, of course, is not in the UK, but they still do fireworks and here’s Douglas Bay on Saturday night courtesy of Flickr user cabmanstu:

image

Stunning!
Many thanks to Stuart for permission to use the photo.

As ever, twitter is divided over the fireworks here. Some don’t see the need, many are enjoying them and then there are the local dog owners whose animals keep us awake each and every sodding night, but who object to people making noise for a couple of hours on one evening a year.

I hesitate to use the word “killjoys”, but only briefly.