Lateral Science Inverted Three months in Australia Sunday 5th March '06

Whoa! Sunday lunchtime brought more arachnid fun! I`d just bought a small tripod for me camera and said to Mary it was for photographing any wee beasties I came across whilst prospecting. Mary immediately had me in her garden searching. After a couple of minutes she moved a plantpot (not 12 feet from the door) and a weird spider appeared. She said it was harmless, but I recognised the 15mm long white-arsed octoped from my reading. This little bastard can't kill you, but can make the rest of your life a fcuking misery!

A bite off a white-tailed or white-spotted spider (Lampona cylindrata) causes massive tissue destruction, along with maddening pain. There is no antidote to the envenomation, which results in a condition known as necrotising arachnidism. Skin death starts with surface blistering and darkening below. Rapid and agonising, this is accompanied by drastic attacks of vomiting and diarrhoea. The necrosis then has a slow relentless continuation. Surgery is sometimes successful; removing the dead tissue and scraping around it, followed by extensive skin-grafts. Fingers, toes and limbs have had to be amputated. Usually the necrosis continues eating away at the flesh at about a millimeter a month, as a mass of sores and ulcers suppurating a grey fluid along with blood as small vessels are destroyed. Some people have commited suicide because of the unending agony and spread of irreversible skin loss. Fcukin' delightful!

I'm really pleased with my photograph. You can see all eight of this monster's eyes, well worth getting so close to it (I didn't use the tripod). The following photos of a couple of poor soul's necrotising arachnidism are scanned from Les' book, "Australia's Dangerous Creatures". What a bastard nightmare!

n.b. upon further research into this spider I find the jury is still out about whether it's actually the culprit in so many cases of necrotising anachridism. Nevertheless, I don't intend to allow one to crawl on my genitalia. Again.

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