Pottering about on my back verandah this morning, I was inspecting some plants that had been divided recently to check for new growth. One asparagus fern was doing nicely with lots of new shoots, but the other was looking a bit dormant. So I stuck my fingers into the pot to rummage around a bit, and came across what felt like a little spider web…sticky and webby.
As I pulled it out, a rather stroppy-looking red-back mumma emerged, probably upset that I had disturbed her precious nest. :eek:
It would have just made my day to have spent the rest of it in hospital getting anti-venom shot through my veins. :rolleyes:
I read your thread title, and your user name, and knew exactly what you had found without even having to read the OP!
I don’t like killing spiders, but I have to admit I spray our wooden garden furniture and tool boxes a couple of times a year since they seem to be favoured by the redbacks, and I don’t fancy myself or my little one getting a bite.
Yeah, I’m not stupid enough to rummage around in the shed without a can of Mortein and some heavy duty gloves…but I’ve never seen the little bastards in my plants before and just didn’t think.
Would’ve made me a great Darwin-Award Nominee I reckon.
Heh, my husband about freaked out when he saw me one day, lazily poking holes in the dirt with my fingers in a raised flowerbed.
To be fair, I didn’t grow up here.
Now I know the rules - don’t leave the track, tell people where you’re going, and don’t put your fingers where you can’t see them unless you have gloves on.
That doesn’t keep funnel webs out of my kitchen though. Eek!
They can be, but since the introduction of an antivenom, there have been no recorded incidents of Death by Redback. And for a healthy adult, the bite is unlikely to kill you even without the a/venom…but it might make you feel a bit crook for a few days.
Yes, funnel-webs call Australia ‘home’, but I have never seen one in the wild. Not that I’d want to, mind you…those buggers are much creepier than the old redback, and can give a much nastier bite with more intense symptoms. Again though, since antivenom, no deaths here either.
PS…it’s a veritable menagerie around my joint today: first the redback encounter, then abluetongue lizard decided to crawl across the same verandah and then under the outside dunny. Who’d live anywhere else?
Around here we have trapdoor spiders (http://australianmuseum.net.au/Trapdoor-Spiders - do you have any idea how hard it is to search google without looking at the screen) Hideous things lying in wait to pounce out at you yeaeaaarrrggghhh! I am not at all keen on redbacks but at least the red hourglass makes them slightly visible.
On a side note: while my cousin was working in Alice Springs he came across a barking spider - which apparently barked at him loud enough to be heard (no link I am spidered out please google it yourself) when he got down to see what was making the noise it lunged at his face - I repeat yeaeaaarrrggghhh! Gah give me a hideously poisonous snake any day.
I am finding myself very glad to live in an area where most bugs are smaller than my thumb, are not poisonous, and don’t look like something out of a really cheesy horror movie.
Lizard is wicked cute though. Can I have him?
Our five year old daughter, Emily: “Mum! Caitlin’s playing with a red and black spider!”
Mum: :eek: Goes outside to have a look and finds our two and a half year old daughter with a redback in her hand. :dubious: “It looks dead.”
Emily: “It was alive, I think she killed it.”
Mum: “CAITLIN DON’T PLAY WITH RED AND BLACK SPIDERS!”
Caitlin:
Redbacks are not that rare in hot places. In Perth the wheelie bins are always infested during summer (where I live anyway) and I need to be pretty careful. And they get to a size I never saw in Qld.
BTW, I was talking to a spider expert in Brisbane about 20 years ago (don’t ask why) and he was of the opinion that they weren’t native to Australia- rather they came from South Africa.
“CAITLIN DON’T PLAY WITH RED AND BLACK SPIDERS!”
