Oblique angle photo doesn’t do it justice.
When I opened the curtains this morning to let some light in I screamed a little bit. Six-year-old came running and screamed also. She soon changed her tune when I named him ‘Spiderman': “Ooh, can I have him in my room as a pet? No Daddy, don’t KILL him!’
Not that spider killing is a man’s job, but the fact is, man is taller than I am and has a higher reach.
For the record, we did have a discussion about how the creature might be removed without killing him. Ways of killing him inhumanely were tabled then discarded. This included sucking him up with the vacuum cleaner, which didn’t happen.
As we discussed this my husband clapped his hands together and successfully swatted a mosquito. The conversation moved back to the spider. The mosquito got barely a mention. It seems the life of a large creature is more valuable than the life of a small one.
‘Well, I’m not sleeping in here tonight with that thing,” I said.
‘Of course you can, Mum,’ said the six-year-old. ‘You already DID sleep in here with him last night and probably other nights before that, too.’ It was not the time to bombard me with logic.
I busied myself in the kitchen doing important kitchenly work while husband remained in the bedroom. He emerged some minutes later. ‘I didn’t hear a bang,’ I said. He was holding one of his work shoes. ‘That thing is bigger than the shoe,’ he muttered.
I won’t go into the sorry details but the huntsman was eventually killed via shoe and it did require my help. Any attempt to remove huntsmen alive usually results in loss of limb, which for a spider that runs after prey is tantamount to death anyhow, but a slow one.
‘That is the largest spider I have ever seen,’ Australian-born husband muttered, throwing its carcass to strangely uninterested chooks.
I think he’s maybe forgetting about its cousin out in the shed.
SORT OF RELATED: Australia had to ban an episode of Peppa Pig, because it was all about Peppa being scared of a little spider. Children were encouraged to not be afraid of spiders because ‘they’re little and can’t possibly hurt you’. On the contrary, these huntsmen are harmless to humans. It’s the little bastards you have to watch out for.
