I was shaking worse that I did at the movie The Grudge while reading the OP. It is embarrassing to my girlfriend how terrified I am of stupid little spiders. Given that, I usually try to trap and free a spider the first time I see them. Return offenders are not so lucky.
I don’t know how I find the courage to sleep when visiting family in Brazil. The last time I was there, I noticed a whole mess of huge spiders under the eaves in back of my wife’s aunt’s house.
Here’s one of them. Here it is hanging onto a 1" piece of bamboo for scale.
There were about 12 of them in huge webs. I guess I just pretended that they would never venture inside the house.
Of course, there was the time we were at my mother-in-law’s house in Rio and my wife opened a cabinet under the sink to get a pot when all of a sudden out came this massive icky spider, the size of my hand, skittering across the floor.
It looked like a tarantula, but its legs were slick, hairless, and it moved very quickly. As we all freaked, it shot around the corner and disappeared into the bathroom. We came to our senses and immediately ran after it, carrying brooms and whatnot – we couldn’t possibly leave a creature like that loose in the house.
In the bathroom there was one single place it could have hidden: a tall laundry hamper. My sister-in-law used a broom handle to take out each piece of clothing and shake it, as we held our own brooms at the ready. She reached the bottom. It had to be there. She then tipped the hamper over, the monster came shooting across the floor, and we all ran after it swinging our brooms.
That was an unpleasant experience. I never want to see one of those things again.
I was told that it was a caranguejeira, but all images of that particular spider I find on the 'net look like tarantulas. No, this looked somehow ickier.
Here’s a caranguegeira to give you an idea of the horror.
Whyyyyyyyyyyyyy??? Why do I click on the pictures every time?
I forgot my huge spider story from a few months ago. I thank god that my boyfriend was over visiting that night.
As we were getting ready for bed, I went to the bathroom which is right next to the bedroom. As I was getting up from the pot I saw the biggest motherlovin’ spider I have ever seen in person (excluding pet shop tarantulas). It was about an inch long in body and the leg span was about 3 inches. I said “oh my god!” in the most terrified voice and the bf asked what was wrong so I told him the biggest damn spider ever was behind the door. My kitten was in the bathroom with me so I grabbed her up so she wouldn’t chase the darn thing if she saw it. I’m afraid I may have squeezed her a bit too hard but I think she sensed my terror and did not struggle. The boyfriend came in carefully, agreed that it was the biggest damn spider ever and tried to squash it and missed. The it started running along the wall in my direction. Fortunately, he got it on the second try. Had he not been there I would have been too wimpy to get it and had it escaped towards the bedroom I never would have slept in there that night … or several other nights.
Oh, and the kitten survived my death grip.