Yuk. Some time back I received an email from my son with a list of strange things. The reader was supposed to go through and decide which ones were true and which ones were not. At the end you found out that all of them were supposedly true.
One of the "facts" on the list was that we swallow an average of 8 spiders during our lifetime while sleeping.
Given it was an email, I decided it must not be true (I didn't want it to be true) and dismissed it like I do most forwarded email.
However, a few days ago I was scanning some websites and low and behold there was an advertisement which used the same line.
I assume they must have either read the same email I did, or they got it from the source.
Whether it's true or not, it stayed with me.
I don't run squealing when I see a spider, but if there's someone else around who's willing to deal with the thing, I'm going to let them squish it rather than do it myself.
Here's my biggest question about the number of spiders we may or may not swallow: How do they come up with that number?
Would some scientific group put cameras in bedrooms to watch? What about campers, hikers and those who like to sleep in the wild? Do they swallow more and skew the average?
What about places where people live in open huts? Are there still nomads in the deserts?
Does the average include the homeless? Does it take into account those colder areas where there might not be very many spiders?
If anyone out there is counting the number of spiders swallowed, let me know.
Addendum:
Well, I had to go out and look it up! It's a myth. Thank goodness. I couldn't imagine a spider wanting to get into a mouth that's busy snoring, but I could see a slight possibility of it happening (just not more than maybe once in a lifetime). Now, I could see a spider crawling into an ear... it doesn't blow out breath, it's dark...
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