Spiders: Part I

One thing that intrigued us about Australia was the wildlife. I don’t mean all the cute story book animals like kangaroos, koalas and echidnas, I mean the real wildlife, the snakes and spiders. We live in an area where there are no saltwater crocodiles, so that is one thing not to have to worry about, but there are snakes and spiders. We haven’t seen any snakes, and probably won’t, but there are lots of spiders, and they are BIG. There is one, called the huntsman, which this story revolves around.

One of our neighbours told me a story of when she was driving in her mini van one day and looked at her driver’s side window and saw a huntsman on the window. Slowly she took off one of her thongs (flip-flops) and started whacking the window. When she saw that the spider was still there she realized that it was on the outside and breathed a sigh of relief. My story happened yesterday (12 Feb.) when I was driving down to my daughter’s school in our car.

I had been driving for at least 15 minutes when I noticed a huntsman on the driver’s side window, only this one was definitely on the inside of the car because a couple of its legs were on the window and the rest of it was on the door frame. I panicked, rolled the window down a few inches, pulled over to the side of the road and looked back to where the spider was and it was gone! More panicking as I wondered just where it had gone - had it crawled back down into the car? Had it crawled out of the car? (oh please, please, please!) I looked to the top of the windscreen and saw a couple of spider legs on the outside of the car and breathed a huge sigh of relief. I still had to sit there in my car at the side of the road for a couple of minutes to gather my wits, though. I did get out to see if it was still on the car, but it had gone.

Part of me wondered if indeed those legs were on the outside of the windscreen after all... I also wondered about the car ride so far and imagined the spider slowly crawling out from wherever it was holed up (under the driver’s seat? on the back seat? at my feet? just where was it when I got in the car...?) and up the door to get to where it was (I shudder to think about it). For the rest of the day, every time I got into the car I had a good look around to see if there were any more spiders lurking around.

I should say that the huntsman spider is harmless, it will kill other spiders, moths, and insects, so they are good to have around. They are just so darn huge! This is one we saw on our house window by the front door one night. We had left the curtain open a bit and the moths were all attracted to the light coming from the house and so had clustered about that spot, and the huntsman was just sitting there eating at will. It was fascinating to watch, a bit creepy, and I was thankful it was outside and not in (although we have had one in the house - don’t tell the girls!)