#800 – Willies

I recently had a spider that visited me almost every night while I was drawing comics. It’s not uncommon to see spiders in my house but this one was much larger than normal. I finally got a picture of it and posted it to my twitter stream. This prompted someone to send me a link to a page of “The Spiders of Australia.” I now know that I will never go to Australia.

Plus, The Book of Biff #4 is at the printer, but it’s on sale if you order now!

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53 thoughts on “#800 – Willies”

  1. Dzelda says:

    Lol is he scared of spiders? I fioguth a big one today that tried to eat me.

  2. poltaap says:

    I cathed a spider today. its was about 1 inch across and green-yellowish, crawling over my desk, but I lifted it up with a papper and threw it out the window. and there are bigger ones here in sweden.

  3. Ziggy Stardust says:

    I used to take showers like that for weeks after I de-loused my hair… my scalp was itchy and it prompted me to use gallons of lice shampoo on it, and change my sheets every time. I’m still tormented in the middle of the night by thoughts of them.

  4. speearr says:

    I like spiders. I think it would be unfortunate to give Australia a miss because of them…

  5. SharkJumper says:

    Pfft. Most of the brown recluses (or maybe lookalikes) at my parent’s house were over an inch. They’re svelte, though. But then,

  6. SharkJumper says:

    [Tab-Space accident] I saw about one a week.

  7. Zoran says:

    I did this a couple days ago actually. It was closer to 2AM then 3AM, but I was sitting at my computer and a ton of baby spiders started crawling down my screen. I freaked out for a sec due to the sheer number of them, and when I saw a few crawling on my chair I resorted to the shower. I doubt that they were big enough to bite me, but I’m a pansy like that.

  8. Zerp64 says:

    @Zoran: I would have moved out the next day…. I hate spiders.

  9. J says:

    when i was a kid spiders were a non-issue, partially because they tended to stay outside, partially because the centipedes didn’t.

  10. cefiar says:

    I said I was sorry! 🙁

  11. Linzleh says:

    Inside is a bug-free zone…I too have showered away the willies. Ticks are worse though, sneaky, stuck to you and sucking blood! I’ve creeped myself out, guess I’ll be joining Biff in the shower…

  12. Matt Lee says:

    @Linzleh Well, if you turn white and get light headed from loss of blood you know who’s hung on.

    I was going to just read the Biff comic and a few comments and go to bed but now thanks to that now I’m going to have to check every inch of my bed for spiders. Talk of brown recluses do that to me. I know there’s nothing there but I have to anyway! Thanks a lot!!!

  13. Slidey says:

    why did comic number 800 have to be about Spiders?

    anyways.
    My mom was once bit by a spider…a very small one. But her leg was number for 2 days.

  14. MaskedMan says:

    My problem wasn’t the spiders… It’s when I went camping, and something cool and firm slithered over my toes on my way to the latrine… *That* will make you shudder for a good long while. And I *like* snakes!

  15. Nicoli20 says:

    A spider crawled past my laptop a few days ago. And while I was mowing my lawn, I stopped to drink a glass of water, and when I came back, two spiders were hitchhiking on my lawn mower. Also, a few years ago in my old house, we were visited by spiders, cockroaches, swarms of grasshoppers on the driveway, and a snake with deadly colors: “Red next to yellow kills a fellow.” Good times, good times.

  16. J says:

    huh. i just noticed this is comic # eight hundred. impressive.

  17. Micah says:

    Happy 800th! I’m jealous…my longest running comic isn’t even up to 500 yet. (Then again, I only do them 3 times a week.)

  18. Heatherface says:

    HAHAHA!! THE SPIDERS!! I loved those posts.

  19. Maya says:

    Lol. I’ll have you know we Australians are very proud of our dangerous wildlife. And yes, we have many many types of animals that can kill you but it really isn’t actually very dangerous to visit. I’ve lived here almost all my life and have only seen a handful of really dangerous spiders. So please do come visit!

  20. Matthew says:

    KILL IT!

    My room in my old house was really bad for spiders, really bad. Exceptionally bad because of shitty English builders. There were straight up holes in the front of the room… Hard to explain. Anyways, there was this one massive spiders that annoyed me all year, it would come out and by the time I had something to kill it, it was gone again. Two weeks before I moved out I finally managed to kill it.

    I hate spiders, I’m not afraid of them as such, but they crawl around and annoy me.

  21. Kree says:

    Ohh boo hoo to all you big WHIMPS! As if tourists ever see those spiders outside of a glass enclosure. I’ve lived here all my life and I’ve probably encountered less spiders than YOU have, sheesh…

    Now the Kangaroos, THOSE things are literally everywhere.

    *sigh* we already get enough overblown stereotypes from the likes of Baz Luhrmann…

  22. Nilly says:

    Gaaahhh, I hate spiders! >.< One bit me when I was eight, the inside of my elbow was red and swollen for about a week. It was a really tiny spider too. O_o We get a lot of spiders in our house because it’s oldish, about fifty or so years, and our basement is utterly full of holes for them to crawl into. Nothing beats finding an earwig in the tub though. -.-;

  23. ZeoViolet says:

    *Hates reading spider horror stories*

    There are spiders in this house…I see them every year and a minor influx in springtime. I generally leave them alone as long as they leave me alone, although if they cross my path…well they’d better not. They do keep away worse insects, and that has some value to me. I’m not terrified of spiders unlike my mother.

    Eh, no, my problem this year has been earwigs. I rarely saw any until my landlord decided to paint the house and they ran for it…INSIDE. Here came the bug spray. Problem’s under control now but I’d never been afraid of them before either, but for a few days I sure had the willies.

  24. MaskedMan says:

    @Maya;
    You’re wrecking Oz’ reputation! Next, you’re going to tell me that Drop Bears aren’t real. 😛

  25. Croc says:

    @Maya A handful is enough to keep me away. I like my cozy apartment, and I spray about 4 times in between the maintenance

  26. sco3tt says:

    Sure, spider, but what’s an amusing way to open one?

  27. Karen says:

    Aw, what a sweet little Lycosidae (wolf spider)! Probably an H. helluo — they’re common in houses, although they usually avoid humans. They’re very good critters to have around your home — they eat nasty bugs like mosquitoes.

    Then again, I’m a tarantula owner, so this is what I consider “big” for an arachnid (her tank is just to the left of my computer desk):

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lasiodora_parahybana

  28. Kit-Kun says:

    There’s been something eating me up in my bed for the last…two weeks? Maybe more. It’s annoying when I wake up with a new ichy spot and find a tell tale red dot and slightly red area around it. Vinger water helps, but still.

  29. baughbe says:

    My guess for the week, Reasons to take a shower/bath

  30. DOOD! says:

    Congrats on your 800th Chris!
    Here’s to hoping for another 800 (and to your spider infestation to one day disappear as well).

  31. The Dustin says:

    1st, congrats on 800, 2nd, Spiders scare me, but worse, is that black widows live in the area, and have found 2 small one in our kitchen (different years) and one huge one outside that I didn’t check to see what is was until I had smacked it with the snow shovel.

  32. i.half4 says:

    @ Slidey: By jove, the question is the answer! I actually wouldn’t have made the connection between spiders and other eightish things. Thanks.

    And another congrats, Chris! Thanks x (800+)

  33. Maskdt says:

    The jewel spiders around here get bigger. Luckily they’re timid, rarely bite (and are non-venomous), and have a pretty pattern on their abdomens. Too bad they’ve taken to breeding in my backyard; nothing quite like watering the plants and finding a web with hundreds of tiny spiderlings.

  34. i.half4 says:

    So how did Biff get that much steam from a cold shower? Dry ice?

    So this weeks theme must be: the fog of creepy things to come…

  35. Chris says:

    @i.half4 – That’s not steam, he used an entire bottle of Lilac body wash.

  36. Hershey says:

    Oh gosh, spiders.
    I know its not really a spider, but once when I went on vacation and got a cabin, the front porch screen was literally COVERED in daddy long legs. I killed as many as I could with help from my dad. .-. Worse, that same cabin had ant infested beds, and I got sick on that vacation. I’m never goin’ there again.
    Theme ; Things that have to do with the number eight? [ Eight legs on a spider! =) ]

  37. -2! says:

    Well its 8 week for 800 comics, just like you did on comic 700 week.

    There Chris, I guessed in one guess, I am to tired to guess more then on. From here on in my actual guess will be Italicized when I do the overkill amount of guessed. Until I realized it was comic 800 I was expecting this to be the week of the spider chasing Biff.

  38. Radical Edward says:

    I don’t like spiders that much. I lived in a house that was full of them when I was a teenager. Couldn’t sleep some nights.

  39. greatslack says:

    Happy 800th comic!

  40. Paige says:

    Guh…I am terrified of spiders! >_< Always have been. Even really little ones have me shaking the heebie-jeebies off for five minutes. And the bigger they are, the more than likely you’ll see me jumping onto furniture like an old-school housewife would do with mice! Thankfully, my knight in shining armor husband will kill them for me. Even if being microscopically small he’ll just quietly roll his eyes and swat them dead. Yay! ^_^

  41. -2! says:

    you are closing in on 1000 comics, it feels like only a few weeks ago you were at 700. By my calculations (aka counting weeks) comic 1000 should occur on Monday April 12 2010. This is assuming that there is no guest comic/Chris is sick weeks.

    I request that comic 1000 be made into a wallpaper.

  42. weerd2normal says:

    well, where i lived, there was a problem with people setting free mexican jumping tarantulas, the big red kneed ones, were every where,and one day whilst on my hammock, a huge one around the size of cd, was crawling on my leg. and when it sprayed it water, a million baby tarantulas started swarming my leg. that was and awful day for those young spiders, they are dead

  43. weerd2normal says:

    oh, sorry for the double post BUT, happy one hundreth, and a keep up the good arts chris

  44. weerd2normal says:

    i suck so bad, happy 8 hundreth

  45. no name says:

    happy 800! what does 3AM have to do w/ 8 though?

  46. Kya says:

    I have arachnophobia, so whether I want to or not, I freak out when I see spiders.

  47. -2! says:

    @ no name

    Spiders have 8 legs

    I have some bug stories, most at my cottage. We used to have earwig infestations, apparently the first area around there to do so. Now we don’t but the areas around us do (mind you they do show up outside still sometimes), spiders don’t bug me although we do spray the cottage so that we don’t have to clean of there webs. Ants are always a pain, we had 3 big hills last year. 2 were killed with pesticides killed 2 of them, but the third was right near the lake and we wanted to not get the pesticides in the lake (which is unusually healthy compared to others in the area) that was was mostly killed by my dog, who decided to use that exact spot to enter and exit the lake (she crushed all the tunnels into a solid muddy mass)

    Misquotes are the most hated bugs at our cottage but even there we luck out. We have an unusually large bat population, and as a result an unusually small nocturnal flying insect population. So relatively low mosquitoes. I have not even gotten bit this year even after several bonfires.

  48. Mad Mule says:

    i once saw a big black widow or it was big for a black widow but i am usaully not afriad of spiders especially the small ones the bigs i really do not like but i have to deal with mice and spiders and the cats keep the mice down and mice keep the spiders downa dn the spiders keep other bugs down but happy 800th chris

  49. Solord says:

    The worst place in Australia to go is the west coast down around Sydney. It makes me glad that Perth doesnt have as many spiders. my house may be infested with em but they arent deadly

  50. Elkian says:

    Great. Well, I know what I’M doing at three am….

  51. AusQ says:

    You should do a google image-search for ‘bird-eating spider’. See what we have in Australia. Cairns, land of sun, fun, and giant creepy-crawlies.

  52. Gwid says:

    Living in Australia, I should really be used to spiders and snakes and the like by now.
    I’m not.

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