Julie Guardino:
It would depend on the type of spider.  If it's poisonous, get an
exterminator.  Try to catch some and, if there's a University or College
around (most have entomology depts.), they can tell you if it's poisonous
or not.
 
My first ferret Snoop used to kill barn spiders (huge suckers).  She'd
never eat them though.  I think that she liked to play with them and when
she got bored she'd kill them.
 
Mia:
I would have been mad as a hatter if someone did that to me.  I think that
when you finish this course, and get your final grades, you should tell the
ignorant and insulting professor what for.  He had no right to speak to you
as if you were a 5 year old child.  And he did it in front of someone else.
Don't let it upset you, and act like nothing happened, sometimes people do
this sort of thing just to "get your goat".
 
Julie Dowdy:
HAHAHA!!!  Mine do the same thing.  When you're up, they want to sleep.
When you want to sleep, they're up.  Miko goes a little further with the
water bottle though, she grabs the cage around the bottle and shakes for
all she's worth, she's done this for a half hour at a time.  I keep telling
her to stop or she's going to ge mommy kicked out (I live in an apartment).
Oscar decides that the recycled paper in the litter pan doesn't belong
there anymore so he's shredding it and moving it around.  Miko gets mad and
they end up screaching at each other for 10 minutes.   They do this EVERY
NIGHT.  You'd think that I would be used to this by now.
 
Becki Kain
 
When I first got Oscar, he'd scratch at his face constantly.  I took him to
the vet and he was checked and there was nothing there so the vet thought
that it could be stress (new home).  About a month later he would scratch
his face and be sticking his paws in his mouth, kind of digging.  I took
him to the vet again and there was a pea sized lump in his cheek.  Surgery
was scheduled.  When they opened him up, the actual size of the lump was
about the size of a quarter, It was growing inward as well as outward.  It
was pushing on his eye and on his brain.  They had to remove most of the
cheekbone, and replace it with that hard plastic stuff.  The mass was
tested and it was a benign Osteoma.  He doesn't scratch his face anymore
and is quite the fat ball of fun.
[Posted in FML issue 2598]