Creepiest thing ever

A few years ago, I went to Madagascar with World's Coolest Grandmother, my Mom and one of Mom's Nursing Buddies.

One night, we were camping...somewhere. We'd been out trudging through a national forest in the dark, spotting lemurs with our flashlights by looking for eyeshine. This was highly cool, since some of the lemurs were inclined to leap around in the treetops, and you could follow their eyes.

Our guide seemed pleasantly surprised that four women from somewhere called "Michigan" were really, really good at spotting glowing eyes, and had no clue what we meant when we explained that years of looking out for roadside deer had left us very hip to shining eyes.

We returned to our camp, and Maurice (the guide) wanted to point out just one more very cool thing. He shined his flashlight around the tall grass in the clearing, revealing dozens of bright, shining points.

I, foolishly, had always assumed this was drops of dew. But I was wrong.

They were spider eyes. The eyes of what we call here Wolf Spider. Dozens and dozens of sets of spider eyes in that one patch of grass.



Ugh.

I shined my light around now when I'm out at night, and I really, really regret that I know what all those shiny points in the grass and on tree trunks are.

(image above courtesy of SpiderzRule.com, a very nice site owned by one of those odd people who really believe that all spiders are not vicious and evil)