I can be a little nervy around cats.. those needles they have for teeth and claws, and the fact that they can occasionally spaz out.
Of course, I love cats, I love all animals.. except for spiders.
Yes, I am an arachnophobe. Dunno why, neither of the females of my family were/are.
There are degrees of arachnophobia of course and I'm not the worst. Most spiders upon discovery in my home live to tell the tale, I don't harm any of God's creatures if I can help it. If they're too gross then I'll evict them, you know the technique, contain in container then slide a sheet underneath, then chuck out the window. If not too gross then I'll just leave them be.
But you can imagine what my spider story in Australia was like...
So one balmy Friday evening around dusk in Sydney I'm rushing out to catch a flick in the cinema and I run upstairs (two storey apartment) to take a pee and brush my teeth (you never know, I might get lucky
) and after that I just peeked in my bedroom at the doorway, flicked the light switch and there it was. It was summer so all of the windows were open and about a foot from my bedroom window on the wall was a spider.
It was the last and only time I've ever screamed like a girl, literally.. I heard myself.
I didn't even bother to figure out what species it was afterwards but whatever it was, it was the biggest species of spider in Australia and this thing was a Goliath of that species.. It was the SIZE OF MY FUCKING HAND!
You can imagine what that experience was like for an Irish arachnophobe. The fight (to the death) that ensued afterwards was something else, too. I still have PTSD from it