I was dining at a restaurant with my girlfriend at the time and a friend I had taken out to treat for his birthday. When our meals arrived my girlfriend noticed a spider on her plate crawling around the food. If it was my plate I would have flicked the spider off the plate and dove into the meal, but she freaked a bit. When the waiter arrived he apologized and said “Words can’t express how I feel about this.” My friend, being quite a bit more assertive about restaurant mishaps than I am said “Oh I can think of a word…Free!”
So the waiter wrote off our bills for the meal. We left him a tip. Not sure what happened to the poor spider…the real hero in the story.
So you’re saying I should carry a spider vial with me when I go out to eat (which doesn’t happen much anymore)?
Only problem is that I couldn’t bear to let the waiter carry my spider away.
birgerjohanssonsays
Going off on a tangent- there was some 19th century spider researcher named Elias Pudd.
-Spider research is so disadvantaged that I could not find anything through Google except the information that a baddie in John Connolly’s novel The Killing Kind used this alias..
This charmless gentleman took the name as a private joke, as he was something of an ambush predator himself.
Who knows, if you publish a lot about spiders there might be a baddie in a novel a century from now called P Z Myers!
mordredsays
This morning I realized that yesterdays fruit fly infestation in my kitchen has been seriously reduced over night.
The spiders look well fed today.
Rich Woodssays
@mordred #4:
That brings to mind an image of a contented spider using a fly antenna as a toothpick.
magistramarlasays
Our cats love to chase and catch any fly that gets into the house. The problem is that they get a bit rambunctious in the chase. While it’s amusing to watch them leaping over furniture and spinning in the air to catch the fly, it isn’t good for the furniture.
The spiders living in the upper corners of the room have to be content with whatever the cats don’t catch.
blfsays
Tonight — and here in France, somehow making it even better — I got to use a slight modification of that classic line:
ME (in English): “Sir, there was a fly in my rum!”
WAITER (who speaks excellent English): (laughs)
“No problems, it seemed happy, backpedaling… erratically… I flicked it out, it didn’t notice…” (giggles)
“Another of the same, please, but sans fly.”
I wasn’t offered anything gratis, albeit the waiter and I exchanged quips on the theme…
Somewhat unrelated, the reason I was drinking that particular rum tonight — Ryoma from Japan — is because earlier, as a digestive after lunch, I was offered a different Japanese rum, Kiyomi, and wanted to compare the two. (I’ve had had Ryoma before, some time ago, but never Kiyomi.) They are both quite nice, well-crafted yet tastily different from other quality rums (and each other); not sure which I prefer, maybe, maybe, the Kiyomi… albeit the flies (or at least one fly) prefers Ryoma.
I was dining at a restaurant with my girlfriend at the time and a friend I had taken out to treat for his birthday. When our meals arrived my girlfriend noticed a spider on her plate crawling around the food. If it was my plate I would have flicked the spider off the plate and dove into the meal, but she freaked a bit. When the waiter arrived he apologized and said “Words can’t express how I feel about this.” My friend, being quite a bit more assertive about restaurant mishaps than I am said “Oh I can think of a word…Free!”
So the waiter wrote off our bills for the meal. We left him a tip. Not sure what happened to the poor spider…the real hero in the story.
So you’re saying I should carry a spider vial with me when I go out to eat (which doesn’t happen much anymore)?
Only problem is that I couldn’t bear to let the waiter carry my spider away.
Going off on a tangent- there was some 19th century spider researcher named Elias Pudd.
-Spider research is so disadvantaged that I could not find anything through Google except the information that a baddie in John Connolly’s novel The Killing Kind used this alias..
This charmless gentleman took the name as a private joke, as he was something of an ambush predator himself.
Who knows, if you publish a lot about spiders there might be a baddie in a novel a century from now called P Z Myers!
This morning I realized that yesterdays fruit fly infestation in my kitchen has been seriously reduced over night.
The spiders look well fed today.
@mordred #4:
That brings to mind an image of a contented spider using a fly antenna as a toothpick.
Our cats love to chase and catch any fly that gets into the house. The problem is that they get a bit rambunctious in the chase. While it’s amusing to watch them leaping over furniture and spinning in the air to catch the fly, it isn’t good for the furniture.
The spiders living in the upper corners of the room have to be content with whatever the cats don’t catch.
Tonight — and here in France, somehow making it even better — I got to use a slight modification of that classic line:
ME (in English): “Sir, there was a fly in my rum!”
WAITER (who speaks excellent English): (laughs)
“No problems, it seemed happy, backpedaling… erratically… I flicked it out, it didn’t notice…”
(giggles)
“Another of the same, please, but sans fly.”
I wasn’t offered anything gratis, albeit the waiter and I exchanged quips on the theme…
Somewhat unrelated, the reason I was drinking that particular rum tonight — Ryoma from Japan — is because earlier, as a digestive after lunch, I was offered a different Japanese rum, Kiyomi, and wanted to compare the two. (I’ve had had Ryoma before, some time ago, but never Kiyomi.) They are both quite nice, well-crafted yet tastily different from other quality rums (and each other); not sure which I prefer, maybe, maybe, the Kiyomi… albeit the flies (or at least one fly) prefers Ryoma.