So today's story is about spiders. The original story can be found here. You know, I hate spiders. I really really hate spiders. There is nothing on this earth that makes me want to run more than spiders.
So imagine this. You are going to the park. You just want to go and have a good time with your friends or family. After driving around for a while you finally find a good parking space. You park your car and get out. As you are walking to your trunk you hear a wet squish. You look down to see that you are surrounded by these things:
What would you do? I know I would scream like a little girl and jump onto my car.
Well, this is not just a story. As it turns out, about 600 of those spiders lived in a drain in the parking lot of a park in Aichi prefecture. If that wasn't enough, it turns out those little things are poisonous. If a person gets bitten by one of those spiders, they start feeling sick and getting dizzy.
It turns out that the park sent people around to find these spiders and kill them with burners. Am I the only one that can see a mini-forest fire going down here? It is not very safe, but I guess it is better than spraying chemicals around in a public park.
These spiders are not native to Japan. There are always stories of animals being brought into an ecosystem in which they have no natural enemies. If there is no other animal competing for the same food in the same area, the non-native animal can just keep growing in number until something like this happens. If it is something like black bass I am not so put off, but when it comes to a lot of spiders like that, no thank you.
Any way it is now time for the word of the day. Today's word is 蜘蛛(くも). It is pronounced kumo and means spider. You know, I think the reason that I hate spiders so much was that movie with a bug exterminator that ends up having to fight a giant spider because everyone in town was being killed by tiny spiders. What was the name of that movie? Anyone know?
That's it for today. See you next time at JJNN.
Arachnaphobia
ReplyDeleteThank you!
ReplyDeleteMMMM Spiders - I thought they'd become Japanese delacacy (spelling?)... Like the puffer fish...
ReplyDeleteI liked the spiders in the beginning of Arachnaphobia - when they smoked the tree and they fell out the size of cats / dogs...
Speaking of which - cats are the worst thing to introduce into any ecosystem - people should NEVER let them out of the house. They are the only other animal which hunts for fun - the first being humans. But for some reason - no one allows humans to be counted as bad for the environment.