The War Imperial Spider
posted by on August 29 at 9:59 AM
And what is this all about?
The family of a British soldier serving in Afghanistan has been forced from their home after a poisonous spider hitched a ride back with him and apparently killed their pet dog.Ring a bell? A 19th century bell? The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins? The Sign of the Four by Arthur Conan Doyle? Yes, you can see now that this story about the British soldier, the return, and the evil spider that is brought back to the home land is a classic example of colonial anxiety. The imperial adventures always have this worry, this fear, this sickening sense of exposure. The spider is nothing other than a sign of British guilt.The camel spider’s bite is not deadly to humans but can kill small animals.
Lorraine Griffiths and her three children, aged 18, 16, and 4, moved out of their house in Colchester, southeast England, and are refusing to return until the spider is apprehended, the UK Press Association reported.
Griffiths told the East Anglian Daily Times that the spider appeared after her husband, Rodney, returned from a four-month tour of duty in Helmand province, the arid southern Afghan frontline in the fight against Taliban extremists.
“My son Ricky was in my bedroom looking for his underwear, and he went into the drawer under my bed, and something crawled across his hand,” she told the paper.
She said their pet dog Cassie confronted the creature, which they identified on the Internet as a camel spider, but ran out whimpering when it hissed at her.
BBC covered this story yesterday. The best line was the last sentence of the article which was grammatically incorrect and sounded like the camel spider was found using the internet. I pictured the spider surfing porn sites when the kids got home.
"The spider is nothing other than a sign of British guilt."
uhm....not really since it was a real spider that killed a real dog. you can make as metaphorical as you want chuckles, but you can say it was nothing more since it started as a physical manifestation. I know that probably doesn't interest you since it wasn't made out of concrete, but c'mon...
Hahaha. Awesome. Eightlegsspread.com! Octofisting.com! Sexoskeleton.com!
That article is flat-out idiotic; a camel spider is not an insect. It holds the same relationship to spiders as do scorpions.
It also neglected to mention that camel spiders have no venom, so it would be very difficult for one to kill a dog.
What? No shoutouts to "The Adventure of the Speckled Band?" Screw you, Charles.
Mudede of the Baskervilles!
NO MORE SPIDER PICTURES PLEASE.
Gyehh.
love you CM
wow over thinking HURTS. lame.
The dog's British guilt killed it? That is one conflicted pooch. And I thought that the bark of a French dog and that of a limey canine were the same. I thought you were through with metaphysics, Charles.
By the way, there are no zebra mussels in the Great Lakes either, it's just white guilt over anti-miscegenation laws. And there are no Asian longhorn beetles infecting trees either, rather it's the guilt of how we treated Asians during World War II.
Dutch Elm disease is the manifested guilt of the first immigrants to New York for not bringing more of their home country's easy-swinging ways. While dandelions don't actually exist in North America, but are the tummy aches of the world's children from eating too much sugar in the summer time.
This is kind of fun. I want your job, Charles.
Fantastic. "The Moonstone" is a family favorite.
Not to be weird, but surely there's a way to tell? And unless the dog had a stress-induced heart attack, I don't think so. They're not poisonous.
... something CNN reported incorrectly, BTW. They say its bite can kill small animals - only the Indian species has any kind of venom. The Iraq one just has a really unpleasant bite.
Anytime I see the words "colonial anxiety" I always scroll back up to confirm that Charles Mudede is writing the post. It could be about spiders, children being run over by cars, or peanut butter sandwiches and it would still mention something akin to "colonial anxiety" and it would always be Charles.
That's no spider. It's a solifuge, which are sometimes called "sun spiders" or "wind scorpions". As #4 points out, it would be just as (in)accurate to refer to it as a scorpion.
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