Argh! Spiders!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I live in Australia, which amongst others has the large and hairy Huntsman spider that roams around and about.

It’s not considered dangerous, it’s actually rather passive for the most part, but it’s big and ugly and freaky looking.

I don’t see them very often, but they do occasionally take up residence in a house, and one did so yesterday. About 8cm span including its longest legs.

It was a bit freaky at first, but he just sat on the wall all day. Until the evening when he started to move about a bit and ended up on the ceiling right above my computer desk.

Next morning I checked the ceiling and walls and he was gone. Not in the kitchen, or on my desk either.

So I switched on my monitor.

Yipe! There he was! Hanging its legs over the edge of my screen.

So I didn’t know how to deal with it. Ignore it? Tap at it until it moved away? I wanted to scoop it up and remove it from the house, but somehow do it while standing ten feet away at all times. Not really that easy to achieve.

In the end I draped a towel over it, thinking I’ll wrap it inside and then scoot it out quickly, letting it sort itself out without my supervision. Good theory, rubbish in practice, as he just scuttled out of the way of most of my attempts, and in the end I haven’t managed to shift him.

He’s currently sitting on the back of my monitor, dormant, and for me it’s “out of sight, out of mind” until he re-emerges sometime later today.

Ugh.

2

Ugghh, gross. I hate Huntsman spiders, they are just so horrible-looking. To top it off, they have the nerve to be slightly furry. Fur is for cute things, you scuttley little bastards!

Despite your fear, you’re dealing with it better than I would, GuanoLad. I usually have to get someone to help me when a Hunstman turns up inside.

3

Primal instincts cause me to jump when one scuttles unexpectedly, but basically we have these all through our house and my garage/workshop and I like them. They eat cockroaches. They’re harmless.

8cm? Hah. My record is 18cm. We got him out of the apartment we were living in though, because we were worried that it had been sprayed with long lasting insecticide and Grampa Spider might come to harm if he stayed inside.

4

Yeah, I’m not really concerned by his moving in to my home too much. I just wish he wasn’t on my desk, as it is somewhat disconcerting.

5

IME all you can do is wait because trying to forcibly grab it will end up killing it, and chasing them always causes them to dive into the nearest crevice or dark spot which is normally in or near where you are trying to get them out of or away from.

6

Taze it, bro. I know that Aussie insects are generally larger than American ones, but GOD DAMN HOLY SHITFUCK GET IT OUT OF HERE. That one is far too large for me to coexist with it. What happens if you wake up with it ON YOUR BED or IN YOUR FACE!?!??!?!?!?!? What if he decides to commit spidercide and runs into your mouth at night??? What if he is walking on the ceiling directly over your bed and loses his spidey-footing and falls directly into your ear, and gets stuck and maybe even lays eggs while you’re asleep and then a week later you get a really bad earache and then BOOM you have a million microspiderkids running down your face and then you die from a heart attack?

(These are the phobic and probably unrealistic worries that prevent ANY size spider from living near me indoors)

7

I think of spiders in the exact same way I think of octopusses. Yes, they are evil, unholy and mark my words, one day they will rule us all with little or no mercy; but they are so fucking cool, you just gotta love 'em.

8

What I don’t understand is how he got onto my desk in the first place. It’s quite separate from the wall, and the only way to get on it is from the floor and climb up the legs, or drop on it from the ceiling which is where I left him last night.

And it seems to me that dropping from that height onto a hard surface can’t be good for a spider that large, especially since Huntsmans don’t spin webs, so it seems it deliberately worked its way all the way to the floor and up the table leg just to sit on my boring monitor. Maybe it likes the heat it gives off, but is it worth that effort?

9

Huntsmen are very active hunters, hence the name. I’ve seen one spot a smaller bug from some metres away then actively stalk it and then dash in and grab it. They roam a lot, looking for stuff to eat. They just end up in random places, as a consequence.

10

WHAT?

Usually?!? This implies that their appearance in your home is a regular thing!

omfgwtfbbqkladkfj;adkd

I’m sorry but FUCK Australia!

There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home.

11

If I understand correctly from recent media portrayals, Australia is either on fire, under water, or in the process of being blown either into the fire or into the water by 300 km/h winds.

This must be upsetting to the local wildlife, which all seems to be either big enough to eat you and eager to do so, or dripping with enough venom to kill a hundred strong men.

I’m fairly sure something will be along shortly to kill the spider and take up its sweet eco-niche behind your monitor. Or it might be an earthquake, since the other three elements have had their go and it’s only fair.

12

The worrying thing is, you might be right.

13

You could buy yourself a spider catcher. According to the blurb it doesn’t harm them. It’s a stick with bristles on the end, with a trigger to close them and grab Mr Spidey.

14

Maybe it detected a bug in the computer?

As for how it ended up here, I hear they’re pretty good jumpers. Besides, if your desk isnt hovering in mid air, it just has to climb up the legs of the desk.

15

To my eternal horror, I have to deal with probably 5-6 of these hairy invaders per summer and I live in reasonably urbanised area.

16

5-6 per summer? Hell, I could deal with that many in a week if I saw any reason to.

17

I did see him jump, but only a few inches and rather reluctantly after exploring all the other options of where it was heading. My desk is at least a foot away from the wall.

Up the legs seems to be the most likely route.

18

Those are just the ones that make it inside past my many carefully maintained defences. God knows how many I’d have to worry about if I cared about all the ones outside, there’s almost always a bunch of them out there.

19

The really bad thing is when they nestle in your hair while you sleep and lay eggs.

Okay, maybe they don’t really do that.

20

Jesus tittyfucking Christ.

:(:(:frowning:

What the hell is wrong with Australia?!

It’s like when God was creating the world and had a bunch of hair and claws and poison leftover he just “fuck it” and made a seventh continent to dump it all.