1 month ago
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More spidery stories. Stephen Tait’s (of Rose Bay) son, Ben, “noticed that a wolf spider had stowed away in our dinghy as we rode out to our boat’s mooring. On the trip back, despite a careful search, no spider could be found. A week later, on a motor vessel, we observed a similar spider. Having withstood the deck wash, and with a fishing day with bare feet planned, Mr Wolf was given a first-class berth in a lunch box. More strategy and effort seemed to go into this than the fishing. After two trips around the harbour, our supernumerary was placed on a tree in Rose Bay Park. Our only catch of the day.”
Another type of spider, from Kevin Hummel of Wentworth Falls. “I was in the garden when I dug up a funnel web spider. As Macquarie Uni was collecting funnel webs to make an antivenene, I sent my young son to get a jar with a lid. He returned with a herb jar, which I encouraged the large and angry funnel web to enter, and then sent the jar inside for safety. Meanwhile, my daughter’s new boyfriend had come for dinner and, with him watching, my wife whipped the lamb out of the oven, grabbed the herbs and tipped an even angrier funnel web onto the lamb. Despite this, daughter and boyfriend are still married some decades on.”
As David Morrison of Springwood says about catching funnel web spiders for venom milking, “Failure is not an option”.
After recent sad stories of “lost” cars, Michael Payne of West Pymble says he once asked a PhD student studying memory why he could remember the name of someone he went to primary school with, while not remembering where his car keys were. Her reply was, “I have no idea.” Which just goes to show about education, knowing what you don’t know can be as valuable as knowing what you do.
Memory, of course, is a mysterious thing. Christina Foo of Wahroonga admits that, “I wander about house looking for my glasses, only to find they are on my head, or search for the mobile phone then realise when I’m talking on it.”
Then, to those many alert Col8ers who asked, no, C8’s talk about spiders (drinks) had nothing to with Good Food’s Tuesday story about sparkling wine spiders, at least not from this side of the building. C8’s reach is far, but not quite that far. Pure coincidence.
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