Acidman’s writing about bats. I used to be afraid of spiders, but I was never afraid of bats. Bats were always kind of exotic and cool, even though they were everywhere when I was a kid. Spiders, on the other hand, were just flat-out scary. I despised those hateful little bastards. It probably dated back to the time when we were swimming at my grandpa’s pool, and my dad got out of the water and put on his tanktop, only to discover that a black widow had moved in and staked out a claim. Despite being a big tough man who had survived marriage, spoiled children, and repeated attempts by the Viet Cong to shorten his life, his reaction could only be described as “losing one’s shit.” Not that I blame him. He handled it a lot better than I would’ve. At least he didn’t scream, “for the love of God, take the children!” as I undoubtedly would’ve.

Despite being somewhat tough in other respects, I suffered for years with arachnophobia. Even little wolf-spiders would set my blood a-curdling. I never got over the fear until I met this little beauty: the Gold Weaver Spider, of the Australian Persuasion(I’ve got a great photo of this bastard. I’ll post it as soon as I can find it). The Gold Weaver is about as big as a dinner plate, and likes to build her web across bike paths and swimming pools. She’s the biggest land spider in the world, and I actually touched one. That was right before I wet my pants, screamed like a girl, and finally got over my arachnophobia. Pretty much in that order.

As for bats, Australia doesn’t really have bats, as far as I can tell. They’ve got flying foxes. Picture a bat with red hair and a 7-foot wingspan, and you’ve got a flying fox. If you’re scared of anything in the animal kingdom, just go to Oz, and you’ll see enough of them on a day-to-day basis to get over it.