Venomous Words by Jeff Oliver and Gordon Reilly

Amazing Photography, Pulse-Pounding Poetry

First and foremost, the macro photography by Gordon Reilly in Venomous Words is remarkably beautiful and oftentimes disturbing, especially given the venomous nature of so many of these subjects. The accompanying descriptions and lyrical depictions, by Jeff Oliver, of how you're going to suffer and die from some of these lovelies might make you start checking the floors, windows, and corners of your dwelling place — perhaps even under your covers before you get into bed. The close-up images of these critters convey the intricacy of nature you can rarely see with the naked eye. Venomous Words is an all-around killer.

Check out Venomous Words at Amazon.com here.

Spiders, Food Lion Fails, and Zooming Through Lockdown

The Supper Club Flash Mob

As with many places around the globe, our area is pretty much in lockdown but for essential outings and such. Fortunately, at least for the time being, there are enough "essential" activities that allow one to get out of the house while remaining all but risk-free of infection. This evening, since our regular Supper Club gang couldn't physically get together, we spent a pleasant hour or so video yakking on Zoom. That turned out to be a remarkably fun treat for the lot of us. Under the circumstances, for me, a little Tempranillo went a long way.

Last night, I headed up to Martinsville to the old homestead, as there was necessary business to handle. But it was also pleasant since, for me, the seclusion there feels deeper, more profound than it does here in Greensboro. Unfortunately, I did have to stop at the neighborhood Food Lion to snag a few supplies, and...hooooey...was that ever a bad idea. Although Martinsville is not currently experiencing a major Corona virus outbreak, prudent safety measures only make sense, and it appeared that not a living soul in the store was taking this to heart. No personal buffer zones, no sanitary wipes to be found, filthy dirty grocery carts... holy shit, I probably should have just vacated the premises. As it was, I wiped down the cart with my own sanitizer supply, forced myself away from encroaching human animals, and then, once back at the house, literally bleached every container I had. Although I undertook every possible safety measure I could, I don't have a good feeling about that experience. Not at all.

Back at the homestead, I had a hankering to watch The Sound of Music, which triggers some very deep—and very pleasant—personal memories. For that reason, it's not a movie I can be objective about.  I'm pretty sure I know far more non-fans than fans of this movie. Ms. B. is not a fan. I would certainly never ask her to watch it with me. Regardless, last night, it hit the right spot at just the right time. For this, I am pleased.

After the filum, I set foot out on the back porch, and what should I encounter but a couple of the biggest, meanest-looking multi-legged critters ever to grace the homestead (and we get quite a few of them there). Fishing spiders, best as I can determine; easily a five-inch legspan on the bigger of the two. Actually, they turned out to be neighborly enough—well-tempered and reasonably polite. And they sat still long enough for me to get some decent pics and video.

I hit the road for home around 11:00 this morning, stopping in Eden at the Smith River Greenway to get in some much-needed hiking and exercise. Some while back, regular geocaching partner, Ms. Fishdownthestair, had hidden a few caches along the greenway and asked if I'd mind checking her coordinates prior to her publishing them, as she had some doubts as to their accuracy. Well, of course I did not mind, so I hiked, snagged a few Munzees along the way, and verified that the lady's coords were good. Although a good many living humans were out and about on the trail, my course largely kept me away from them. That was nice.

I did end up watching an utterly wretched horror movie called The Hallows this evening. Easily the most annoying film I've seen since The Babadook, which at least had a reasonably engaging story. I should have heeded my instinct to shut the damned thing off halfway through.

The possibility of some hiking and caching tomorrow does exist, so one can hope.

Stay safe, y'all.

Old dude enjoying some outdoor isolation

View of the Smith River from the greenway. Somewhat high water.

Going for a Ramble

These days, I'm far fonder of spiders than I used to be. At one time, I suffered from damn near crippling arachnophobia. I found spiders fascinating (still do), but the big ones inspired terrible panic attacks. All it took to conquer that particular fear was spending some quality time amongst 'em (see "Face Your Phobia," May 18, 2015). But I'm not so fond of Black Widows who decide to go for a ramble on my living room floor.

At first, I thought this might be a False Widow (Steatoda grossa), but after examining quite a few images, I'm not convinced. The northern and southern variants of true Black Widows do have red spots on their backs (this one, which I uncovered a few years back, is a Northern Black Widow (Lactrodectus variolus). And the false Widows that I've found in the wild generally have a less defined thorax and rounder, more "dimpled" abdomen.

Black Widows are generally not aggressive, and this spider certainly wasn't —  at least until I put the camera right in front of her face, at which point she charged. She appeared to be missing a leg, and the cats were giving her surpassing curious glances, so I wonder if they had tangled. In any event, while I'm generally all about live and let live where spiders are concerned, I didn't want to put her out, have her come back in, and risk another possible tangle with cats. So, sadly, this poor specimen has been flattened. Quick and merciful, yes. But flattened.

Charge!

She was missing a leg. Sadly, she's now missing more than that.

Geocaching GPS: A Great Personal Spider Story

Here's something a little different, at least for this old dude. My latest tale, "Arachnid Alley (or How I Learned to Stop Screaming and Love the Spider)," has just been published in Geocaching GPS: Great Personal Stories of Geocaching Firsts. This is a new anthology of true geocaching stories, edited by Kimberly Eldredge and published by New Frontier Books. Like all the stories in the book, mine is not fiction but a recounting of a noteworthy first geocaching experience, mine relating how I (almost) overcame Arachnophobia, back in my early days of geocaching. This particular adventure involves dark tunnels, big spiders, and three adventurous souls with flashlights and Garmins. Actually, once our intrepid gang got past stage one of the cache in question — "Greensboro Underground" (GC1R7EV) — the Garmins were superfluous. Nerves of steel and warped senses of humor were not.

The book has just been launched so it will be available at GeoWoodstock 14 (GC5Q1ET), a regular geocaching mega-event to be held this coming weekend at the Botanical Gardens in Chatfield, CO. Sadly, the distance puts it out of reach for me, but how nice the book will be available for its perfect target audience. You don't have to be a geocacher to have fun with this one, though. There are 50 tales from geocachers all over the country, with some real gems about first encounters of all kinds. It's available in paperback and Kindle formats.

Check it out here:

GEOCACHING GPS: GREAT PERSONAL STORIES OF GEOCACHING FIRSTS

Face Your Phobia

I like snakes. They're neat creatures, and it really distresses me when people say things like "The only good snake is a dead snake," and other such nonsense. Without snakes, you personally would probably have to deal with all kinds of unpleasant pestilence you never even think about, and I'm betting that since you probably don't really have to deal with snakes all that often, you're better off leaving the snakes be than suffering the pestilence. I bring this up mainly because of a couple of Facebook posts from the past few days that included photos of snakes, and the sheer venom of some of the comments really showcased the irrationality of people's fears.

The photos above are from two or three years ago when I ran across this very friendly, six-foot-long black racer at Cedarock Park in Alamance County, NC. When I'm out geocaching, I'm often in their environment, and over the years, I've encountered just about every variety of slithering serpent that North Carolina has to offer. Make no mistake: even the venomous ones — around here, primarily Copperheads — would rather do their own things than mess with you, and most often, they'll make every effort to avoid dealing with you and your phobia. A while back, I was crossing a creek and inadvertently stepped on a Copperhead, and the fellow had the decency to vacate the premises with all due haste when he could have, had he been so inclined, just as easily given me a chomp on the leg. (Note that I call the snake "he" only because he had very masculine shoulders; nothing against the female of the species.)

I'll tell you something. Up until I started geocaching and found myself, not only in snakes' environments, but in spiders', I had a damn near debilitating case of arachnophobia. I was always fascinated but truly, deeply terrified by spiders of all types and sizes (of course, the bigger the more horrifying). Any spider I encountered was a dead spider, no ifs, ands, or buts. Awful, awful creatures; predators; alien-looking. Then I did a cache called Greensboro Underground, and the name says it all. To claim this cache, I had to go considerable distances through underground pipes, and at one stage, I was forced to confront my gravest imaginary dread.

Northern Black Widow (Lactrodectus variolus).
Don't mess with it, and it won't mess with you.

It went like this:

I was with a couple of gentlemen (who, I might add, are not wimps, in the technical sense of the word) that I will call Tom and Ethan. (To answer your question: yes.) To reach stage 1, we had to enter a very tight culvert, and Ethan had the good grace to go first. It wasn't moments before he was screaming in a panicked, high-pitched voice that led Tom and me to believe he must have been gravely injured. We're hollering, "What is it? What's wrong?" And he cries back, "This is the biggest spider I've ever seen! Wait — there's another one. And another one. Oh, Christ, the place is full of them!"

Tom and I debated a moment. There were spiders, and there was the geocache. All right, then; we do have our priorities, you know. The two of us wormed our way into the pipe, and — oh, my Christ — the confined space was absolutely crawling with big honking spiders, the smallest of which probably had a four-inch leg span. Our destination lay through a specific pipe, above which a huge wolf spider was resting on its laurels. Ethan put his foot down and declared that he was not going into the pipe with that spider hanging right there. Well, feigning the air of the undaunted, I took my hiking stick and knocked the spider off the wall — at which point it angrily began to scurry straight toward Ethan.

At this point, Ethan screamed a piercing scream and began a dance routine that would have shamed Gene Kelly. Tom and I took to chuckling, and since said spider had vacated its perch, I decided to take advantage of the moment and go into the next pipe.

Oh, shit, did I really do that?

At this point, I did question my wisdom, for this pipe was also full of spiders. They were all just hanging around on the walls and ceiling, and not really bothering me. However, as I ducked to go in, something fell onto my shoulder with a distinctive plop.

"Tom, my dear friend," I said. "Please tell me that was a not a big spider."

"Nope, just a hunk of grass and mud from the drain up there."

"You wouldn't lie to me, would you?"

"Not about that."

All right then. On I went, past veritable walls of spiders that sat contentedly watching me. They didn't really do diddly but scare the living crap out of me. Yet, after Ethan's little dance there, it was hard for me not to go through that pipe overtaken by paroxysms of laughter.

From that moment on, I never again suffered a fear of spiders. They didn't want to bother me. As a matter of fact, I'm pretty sure they were all laughing at Ethan too.

For what it's worth, if you come upon a snake — or a spider, or some other basically innocuous creature — that for reasons anything other than rational make you want to kill it, try instead picturing it in its underwear or maybe a big old dude like Ethan break dancing inside a culvert filled with spiders. Really, it's funny as hell.

You don't need to kill or otherwise antagonize the critters. Just give it some thought. Face your phobia. Fuck your phobia.

It worked for me.

A fun little black rat snake that was meandering about in the heat of winter, a couple of Decembers ago.
I'm sure he would rather have had cool weather and been taking a nap.

Kingdom of the Spiders

After work, Kimberly and I paid a visit to the very nice Bistro B Wine Bar in Kernersville, then headed over to Prissy Polly's Barbecue for a geocaching event honoring Christopher "Ranger Fox" Hall for achieving a momentous milestone — having found 30,000 geocaches. Whoa, and all. From there, she and I headed up to Lake Brandt to go on an enjoyable nighttime hike on the Laurel Bluff Trail, where my night cache, "The Missing: Dweller in Darkness" (GC3G3N7), resides. I wanted make sure the reflector trail was in good condition — it was — but mainly it was just a good night to go out on a hike and commune with spiders. For oh, my lord, they are out there in force. Big ones, little ones, teeny ones, giant ones. The forest was absolutely brilliant with their glowing eyes in the beams of our lights. Some were bright enough to mistake for reflective fire tacks — and perhaps ironically, those that glowed brightest belonged to the smallest spiders. We did come upon the second-biggest spider in the world's third largest cousin, pictured above, which made Kimberly holler. Some of you probably heard it. (The biggest spider in the world lives over in Burlington; my friend Paul found it on a caching outing one night a few years ago, and he's been in recovery ever since.) The spiders didn't bother me, but I did fuss a bit when I found a slug crawling on me. Gooshy.

The Deeps

Okay, not "the deeps," as in Bradbury's "The Foghorn"; more as in "Let's grab a geocache down in a big honking drain pipe!" For me — Damned Rodan, geocacher — such places are commonplace settings these days, so I'm really glad I'm not utterly freaked out by giant freaking rat bastard hairy ugly vile beastly monster man-eating spiders... at least, not the way I used to be, or some caches I would just put on my ignore list (and really, most caches I consider very good friends of mine). Yesterday, I found myself underground again — not far — but absolutely surrounded by these big old Wolf Spiders. There was a time — even as recently as a three or four years ago — I would have been utterly paralyzed with terror. I shit you not, pee-in-your-pants, speaking-in-weird-obscene-tongues horrified scared. I suspect it all goes back to the time that, as a five-year-old, there or about, I was playing under the back porch at home, and a grandaddy longlegs the size of Sheboygan dropped down on me and started prancing about. I was, I must tell you, unenthused. To the point of screaming bloody murder unenthused. Ever since then, arachnophobia has been a very real, very intense issue for me. As I've come to find over the years, though, geocaching is handy as hell for conquering old fears. Hang around with giant freaking rat bastard hairy ugly vile beastly monster man-eating spiders long enough, and you kind of begin to take them in stride. (Mind you, hopefully not too much in stride.)

Anyway, if you have phobias you'd like to undo... my advice is to take up geocaching and go after a few challenging hides. Then make a habit of it.

It works for acrophobia, too. More on that one later.

I Don't Like Spiders and Snakes

Actually, I do like snakes, quite a lot...as long as they're not venomous and looking to lay their teeth against me. Today, I spent a pleasant afternoon and early evening at Cedarock Park, near Burlington, hunting up a cache or two, and as I was making my egress through the woods, I saw this long, black tail sticking out from behind a nearby tree. "A-ha," I say. "I have found me a snake." Sure enough, it's a big black racer, not an inch shy of six feet, laid out as comfy as you please, giving me the eyeball. Turns out, snake is the friendliest fellow I've ever seen out in the wild, for he scoots right on up to me — absolutely fearless but not even a little aggressive — lays right up against my shoe, and lets me rub him on his back just a bit before continuing on his way. Important snake business, and all. I did enjoy making his acquaintance, for he's completely harmless and quite beneficial for the environment. Black racers are very common around here, but most of the time, they're anxious to get out of your way. Chances are, this one had just finished his elevenses and was feeling mellow.

Less  welcome was the umpteenth black widow I've run into ever since the weather turned warm. I've seen more this season than I think I've ever seen; they're everywhere, even hanging around the front yard (I think they're waiting for the mailman to bring Netflix). All well and good as long as you don't inadvertently pick one up — kind of like I did a while back on a caching expedition. Fortunately, as a rule, black widows would rather play possum than put the bite on you. Don't use them as yo-yos.

Kippur-ween!

As you can see, the spiders around here just keep growing bigger and bigger....

Yon spider was on hand to greet guests as they arrived for the scariest, goriest, grossest, creepiest, most horrifying, and ultimately hysterical celebration I've had the honor of hosting: Kippur-ween! It's what you get when you cross Halloween and Yom Kippur*, which just opened on calendars all over the world. A dozen or so adventurers came round last night to brave the celebration, which ended with no human casualties (that I'm aware of) but saw the tragic mutilation of some of Kimberly's delicious maple-frosted pumpkin bars.

It was a tense moment. A short time earlier, there had been a stunning, rolling, booming sound, which set everyone's nerves on edge, for we realized it was the sound of a Siamese trying to get out of the bedroom upstairs by reaching his paws under the door and shaking it. This went on long enough to cause even some of our braver companions to fear for their hors d'ouevres. Finally, reluctantly giving in to the tremendous psychological pressure, Kimberly went upstairs and released the three imprisoned critters.

A short time later, it happened:

A gray blur. A pounce onto the kitchen table. A sudden recoil, as Frazier landed on the delicious, maple-frosted pumpkin bars; realized he wasn't on a solid surface; and—boing—bounced-slid-plopped back onto the floor.

Then, amid a chorus of horrified groans, he settled back...and began to lick his paws.

At least some of the bars were salvageable. The rest...taking the suggestion of artist extraordinaire Cortney Skinner...we just smoothed over the frosting so we could share them with our most deserving acquaintances.

*I'm pretty sure none of us are Jewish, but who says we gentiles don't know a good party when we see one?

The Hand of Destiny: a harbinger of doom for certain delicious baked goods?

Lovely head. Reminds me of a song by Goldfrapp.

The horrible aftermath

Journey to the Centre of the Earth

There's a nice new multi-cache in town called "Greensboro Underground," and guess where you get to hunt. Yes...down there. So, right after work, I met up with friends Night-Hawk (a.k.a. Tom) and the Sneaky Bulldog (a.k.a. Ethan), all of us dressed for the occasion and armed with several flashlights. Thus, we commenced our journey. To my chagrin, halfway through the adventure, my brightest light began to dim rapidly, even with relatively new batteries; happily, I carried a spare, and between us, there was no shortage of lighting.

At the first of the three stages, we snagged the coordinates for the next, held our tongues just right, and made our way into the earth's depths. Here, the diameter of our conduit was only about four feet, so it was t-i-g-h-t. And then what should our lights reveal but...spiders. BIG FAT HAIRY BLACK F-'ING SPIDERS—of the four-inch leg span variety—in mass profusion, hanging on every surface; up, down, and all around.

Night-Hawk and the Bulldog gently suggested that I go first.

All righty then! Only ever-so-slightly daunted, onward I went. You should have heard the Bulldog scream when one of the spiders passed right under his legs. Still, at a junction, he bravely took the point and found the requisite clue in short order. Another stage down. By now, it was nighttime, and when we burst exuberantly free of the depths and barreled onto the nearby sidewalk, we surprised an elderly woman walking her dog. Her cry of alarm may still be echoing somewhere out in space. We apologized and explained that we were running from a tunnel full of giant spiders. She made haste to part company with us.

For the third stage, we found ourselves with lots of ground—or rather, underground—to cover. At several junctions, we had more than one choice of tunnels to take, and it paid to choose wisely. At least in these, we could mostly stand upright. For a long distance, we were able to straddle the narrow streams flowing beneath our feet, and we began to think we might actually come out of this endeavor without getting soaking wet. However, came a time the water grew wider and deeper, so we finally said the heck with it, and now my boots are drying out for the next couple of days.

At long last, and lord knows how far in, I spied the cache. But it was here I made a grave mistake! Night-Hawk had kept right on going, but in my enthusiasm, I blurted, "It's here!" Had I not, he might still be down there having scads of fun while I'm lounging around above-ground, enjoying a post-cache martini. I'm sure I'll do better next time.

Actually, I'm glad Night-Hawk is still with us because he documented the whole journey with pics. I was reluctant to take my camera with me because I am a devout klutz, and probably would have dunked it.

At least I am a wise klutz.

Wait, what...?

The Bulldog wanted to play ball, so we let him.

On and on it goes...

Success....