Oh, Those Wacky Australian Spider Milkers.

Prisoners get creative. There was The Great Escape Tunnel, The Shawshank Redemption chess set and the paper mache dummies from Escape from Alcatraz. And I remember many episodes of Oz where the prisoners would drink some concoction called Pruno that they distilled in a remote janitorial closet. In between ass-rapings in same said remote janitorial closet.

But if there were an Oscar for creative brig intoxication, it would have to go to a group of cons in Grafton prison in New South Wales – where a group of inmates have been milking spiders for their venom, diluting it with water and then injecting it into their veins. And we’re not talking about a few daddy-long-legs here. These lads kept four deadly Aussie Redback Spiders as milkable pets. Think a cow with eight legs. Or a spider with a little mini-udder. Actually completely forget that I just went off on that tangent, please.

Alright, “deadly” doesn’t really begin to cover it. These little bastards are a close relative of the black widow, and are even responsible for the odd down-under death. “The venom acts directly on the nerves, resulting in release and subsequent depletion of neurotransmitters.”

There’s a Flaming Lips tune called “The SpiderBite song” which I always thought was a euphamism for heroin induced needle tracks. So I found this spider milk article strangely ironic. But after a quick bit of research, I found out that Wayne Coyne actually based the song around the time he provided a hungry arachnid with a snack while cleaning his garage and had to go to the hospital. So that angle went out the window like a Great Depression stockbroker.

One politician, from the current NSW government’s opposition, remarked “NSW prisons are more like a holiday farm than a prison system.” I’ll take Cabo and a cold sixy of Corona over spider spit anyday thanks, mate. But maybe the politicians should be worried that the practice of spider juicing could spread beyond Australia’s prison system. Or already has – that theory would explain Savage Garden, at least.