Red Vole Family Planning Active!!

I have questions about natural history, kids:

1. Are spiders clean?
Here's the backstory on that one. Last week I was up late reading when out of the corner of my eye I caught sight of something out rambling around on the carpet. When I moved, it went under the couch. I thought it was a mouse. It was not a mouse. When it rambled out again I saw that it was a bigass honkin funnel spider. (Incidentally, funnel spiders only have two speeds: full stop, and deedledeedledeedledeedledeedledeedle. )
I finished my glass of water and popped the glass over him so he wouldn't run around up on my face in the middle of the night; which if you don't take proper precautions they totally will do. If you see a spider late at night and you don't stick a waterglass over it, three hours later you'll be asleep and they'll be right on your face with a little spider can of spray paint tagging the crap out of you, looking up your nose and yelling stuff and then running to the other nostril to listen to the echo. Spiders will mess with you like that.

The next day I took him outside and let him go where he could funnel away to his little hearts content. Meanwhile I was left with an empty glass in my hand and the question: If I was to fill this glass with water and drink the water, would I come down with some kind of horrible spider-bourne disease?

Well? Spiders strike me as a pretty clean animal; you never see them clustering around dog crap or hauling old burger wrappers around. Then again, they do eat flies, which are filthy, and bees, which have venom. And maybe this venom and stuff seeps into their little spider selves and turns them into little 8 legged bags of pestilence. This was a pretty substantially sized spider too; like I said, I thought it was a mouse at first. I don't know. I got a clean glass out of the cupboard anyway.


2. Platypus...oids. Need the info. Like, what is the collective noun, for starters.
a. Are they nice?
If you ran onto one while you were out popping for bass or whatever, would it attack you? And would you be too busy laughing to defend yourself while they tunneled in through your abdominal wall and started gnawing on your lungs? Because they kind of look like something that might do that. They do.
b. Do they make a noise?
It would tickle my fancy if they quacked. That would be so awesome. But it would also be cool if they barked like a dog, too.
c. Could you have one for a pet?
Because I would own one. Oh hell yeah. I would take it on walks, and I would tote it around in a carrybag when it got tired. It could ramble around my house on its little stubby legs, wagging its flappy tail, barking and quacking. I would make it a nice pond out in the back yard . I would name it 'Howard'.

And yes I know they have a poison spur on their back legs. I don't necessarily see that as a drawback. "Do I think Christ ever walked the Americas? Here, hold Howard while I mull that one over."

3. Wild Hedgehogs.
a. Can you just go outside and pick one up off the ground like a baseball? You see naturalists doing this all the time in television shows.
b. Are they nice?
c. Could you have one for a pet?
d. If you pick up an adult hedgehog, do the spines come out and stick in you like a porcupines?Because that would suck. Bigtime.

Seriously, folks, this stuff bothers me. (I used to worry about ducks' feet getting cold in winter. Oh, the SSA will fill you in AT LENGTH about that one.) I've gone so far as to look all this up on the Innerknot and there is Jack Shit out there. This is the kind of thing that people need to know, though! What if you went out and, like, saw a hedgehog and thought 'Well, I'll just pick him up' and it leaped up and stuck on your face and laid eggs down your esophagus? Or you drank out of a glass that spiders had been yippy-yodelling around in and you croaked off horribly and nobody knew why? And then they drank out of the same glass and WHAMMO the same thing happened? This could be happening every day! Similarly, your platypus might have really bad traits that might make it an unsuitable pet. Maybe it would lift its platyleg on the furniture or play in the toilet or make long distance calls. People need to know.
I NEED TO KNOW.