This BEAST was on the outside of my house this morning. Can anybody give me a name for this killing machine? He’s about four inches leg to leg (to leg to leg to leg…) and I’m in NorCal.
It’s time to nuke the house from orbit.
I’m no expert but at first blush I would guess it is some form of Wolf Spider. There are many different varieties of wolf spiders so finding an exact match is difficult.
I’ve run into a few. They are big and creepy and scary but mostly harmless to humans. They are also shockingly fast. They do not spin webs but rather chase their prey down.
I should note there is a similar spider to the Wolf that I forget. Largely the difference seemed to be Wolf spiders stayed on the ground and the other type would climb walls and such. Not that a Wolf spider won’t do that but they generally do not. Beyond that the two species were very similar. If I remember I will post back.
We generally refer to those as “eaters”, as opposed to the ones that don’t have as good of a mouth feel which we tend to call “dinks”. 
Eaters? Meaning you eat them or they eat you?
This thing was so big that, at first, I thought it was a practical joke. So big that there was no way I was going to try to kill the thing, it was half the size of my foot. Can you imagine the crunch? It would have been audible. :eek:
I too live and Nor Cal and I used to get similar if not equally huge and greenish spiders outside my last apartment…Especially if it was wet as it has been lately. My roommate and I called them Garden spiders but I have no idea if that is what they are actually called as I am not sure where we came up with the name. We had two that were around for quite a bit hanging over our front door…We called them Boris and Natasha.
Here is the most likely suspect. It is a very common North American tarantula. It probably won’t bite you, but its abdomen hairs are very irritating. Up in the foothills we watch the males come out in autumn in search of mates. This is one of the spiders that people make pets out of.