Oh no!

 Just when I thought it was safe to sleep

    One bad thing about globalization is exotic animals and plants that invade our lands.

    The Illinois River has Asian carp that literally fly through the air, sometimes smacking boaters in the face.

    Zebra mussels have devastated the perch population in most of the Great Lakes.

    Those damn picnic bugs came from someplace to intentionally land on our food and in our drinks during the summer and fall.

    And Asian beetles, lady bug look alikes, well....they stink and they bite.

    I can handle most of those, as well as the starlings, Burmese pythons in Florida and other critters we have dealt with.

    But this is unnerving.

    The Joro Giant Flying Spider is thought to be in the southeastern United States.

    Three words in that freak me out:  giant, flying, and spider.

    I don't know how giant they are, but they have to be pretty big to be given the name Giant.  It's not like the little guy everyone called Tiny, or the really heavy kid people called Slim.  Those were nicknames given in jest.

    Giant is not.

    And flying?  It's bad enough that some of the bigger spiders move faster than my reactions.  But how far do these fly?  How long can they fly?  Do they have good eyesight to know where they are landing?

    Spiders.  Normally these don't bother me.  Normally.  When I visited Julia one time she said she had some spiders in her cave and would I kill them.  She said they were big.

    I took a can of bug spray, went down into her cave, turned on the light and saw two or three of the suckers.

    So I sprayed.  And sprayed.  And sprayed.

    One of them actually took out a bar of spider soap and started bathing! 

    They mounted a counter attack.  One came charging at me and I stomped on it.   After I got back up on my feet, it just stood there grinning.

    Two others were running across the heating pipe toward my head.

    At that point I made a strategic retreat.

    I told her I took care of them.

    When  her friends came to move her stuff to the new house, it was apparent I had not, in fact, "taken care of them."

    One of her friends did a version of the Irish Jig and two others let out a chorus of words that sounded like. "My god...they are duckin huge!"  Several times.

    Unlike me, they eventually did take care of them.

    So no....I am not looking forward to running into Joro Giant Flying Spiders.  Scientists say they probably won't be in northern Illinois because the climate is not right for them.  Probably.  

    I am saying, don't bet against them.

    And don't forget to check under your bed tonight.

Peade, Love and Prayers for Ukraine