I had a buddy years ago. Hard as nails type of bloke. He'd go hunting, Shooting, Fishing, Camping alone, except he didn't like spiders either. But in all the years I knew him he never really let on that he was scared of them.
We used to go fishing at sunset after work, on a deep sharp bend in the Yarra river up in the mountains near Warburton in Victoria, where it mostly runs clear instead of the muddy color that most tourists see when in Melbourne. It was a terribly steep and high river bank, from where at the top you could just park your car on the edge of a dirt road. We'd find our way through trees, bushes and undergrowth, down to the narrowest little flat area at the bottom where two people could just sit at the rivers edge with just barely enough room for your rods and stuff and a lantern. It took a long time to get down to the river because if you took a wrong step you'd end up tumbling all the way down and it would be hard to stop yourself from falling in......
It was a great little spot where sometimes if you were patient & lucky and you sat still, you could watch a platypus weave in and out of the tangled tree roots by your feet near the edge of the bank, as it tried to catch its dinner. Because of this great habitat and difficulty getting to it, it was abundant with river Blackfish, Trout, and Eels.
We sat there one starlit night, crouched low just waiting to see the tip of the rods indicate a bite. The surface of the water was almost Millpond still, when all of a sudden this bloody creepy spider of some type, much larger than the permissible 20c coin size, came running across the surface of the water towards us like it was Jesus. I never knew before that, that some critters can actually walk on the surface tension of the water. And this bloody thing was making a bee-line for us and the lantern, and most probably all the midges and gnats it saw hovering around it like an all-you-can-eat spiders smorgasbord.
We both saw it at the same time, and without a word to each other screamed in disbelieving horror as we both tried to take off up the steep bank through the ridiculously thick undergrowth masking the skinniest of worn track, to get away from it. I swear we must have climbed over the top of each other at least once each before we suddenly realized that we wouldn't get any further in the darkness without the lantern. And, one of us had to go back for it.
We just stood there looking at each other with the adrenaline pumping, then all of a sudden we both burst out laughing as we realized at the same time we were both scared of the bloody things, and how ridiculous it all was. Once we'd stopped laughing and got our breath back we both gingerly walked back to the spot and had a good look around before we sat down and continued fishing. And, hardly a word was ever said about it again..........
They Be Creeeeeeeeepy!!!!
