It's a well-known fact that Australia is infamous for its spiders, and with good reason.
They're pretty scary looking, have shiny hairy bodies and eight legs!
Unless trapped behind a glass enclosure, even fearless Aussie children, like my grandson, is a bit leery of them.
I hadn't intended on capturing a Huntsman spider on this day.
But if you read many of my posts, you know that I just let life happen when I'm in Sydney, and something astonishing usually does.
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| Grandson looks at a Huntsman with suspicion. |
It was a warm Spring afternoon, and our doors were wide-open.
For some reason, Aussie homes don't have screen doors, which I don't understand since this is Australia.
I would want screens around everything!
While walking past the open doorway, I noticed a Huntsman spider on the top of the roller blind.
I've developed a special knack for spotting critters I don't want to see.
I knew a Huntsman spider flattens its body to get under doors and windowsills, and because our door is near a window, I was able to figure this one out.
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| Door open - no screens! |
I surprised myself and didn't panic . . . this time.
After all, this was not my first dance with a Huntsman.
Once I woke up in the middle of the night to discover one getting ready to crawl up the wall.
I didn't sleep at all that night!
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| Huntsman spider with dust on its legs. |
Another time I noticed one through the window that appeared to be trying to make its way to the window pane.
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| Huntsman spider outside the window. |
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| Huntsman spider on the window. |
It's comforting to know that they are non-aggressive unless provoked, and I wasn't about to do that!
Besides, I've never actually heard of them crawling or dropping down on people - my worse fear!
They have venom, but it's considered low-risk, nontoxic to humans.
A bite may cause swelling and minor pain, and an ice pack and a topical anesthetic are all that is needed to treat it.
To avoid the unnecessary stress of dealing with the spider myself, I quickly texted my daughter, who was on her way home from work, to ask her to hurry!
Then, I sat patiently staring at it - willing it not to move till she came home.
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| A flattened Huntsman spider. |
She arrived within minutes, rushed in, and asked where it was.
Lucky for me, she's a real Huntsman spider trapper!
I was happy to point out its location.
She pulled the shade down a bit, startling the critter, and it was on the move.
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| Huntsman spider crawling down the blind. |
Without blinking an eye, she placed a water glass over it, abruptly stopping its descent, slid a piece of cardboard underneath, and captured it in a matter of moments.
What a pro!
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| Huntsman spider - captured in a water glass. |
The Huntsman is a massive brown hairy spider with a one-inch flat body and eight legs banded and twisted, enabling it to spread them to advance forward and sideways in a crab-like fashion.
They are often are called crab spiders.
They molt to grow, and their old skin can be mistaken for the actual spider.
When they are not inside, they live under loose tree bark and in rock crevices and feed on insects and other invertebrates like mosquitos, cockroaches, and sometimes geckos and small skinks.
They come inside to grab a couple of common household insects and to escape Sydney's hot summer weather.
Some Aussies like to keep them as housemates because of their passive temperaments and appetite for household pests like roaches - not happening here!
Just looking at them makes me squeamish!
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Huntsman spider crawling up our wall.
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As their name suggests, they are true hunters.
They do not construct webs to catch prey.
Instead, they stalk their target, run it down, then pounce.
Like all spiders, they are nocturnal and can get into cars at night, so be sure to close car windows and doors.
They hide behind sun visors and steering wheels and scuttle out, startling drivers going 50 miles an hour on the freeway.
Knee-jerk reactions have caused car crashes.
The mere sight of this enormous spider is the stuff of nightmares, and the movie industry made it the star of their 1990 horror-comedy thriller Arachnophobia.
Named after the debilitating fear of spiders and other multi-legged creatures, many people have Arachnophobia, and many more are just plain afraid of spiders and don't know why.
These eight-legged critters just freak us out!
While filming the movie, the Landcare Research organization in Auckland flew three hundred Australian Huntsman spiders to the set every two weeks.
They were selected because they're scary-looking yet nontoxic and relatively harmless.
Fortunately, unlike the movie, only one comes in the house at a time.
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| The Movie |
There are 1,207 species of the huntsman spider in the family Sparassidae, and 155 of them are in Australia.
Spider experts have identified 4,000 other species, with another 8,000 more still a mystery.
Aussies love their native animals and critters - harming them is never an option.
They believe that the huntsman spider deserves a place alongside koalas and kangaroos and, therefore, should be treasured.
So my daughter took it outside to set it free in a nearby bush - which is the recommended way to remove spiders from the house.
If you swat a pregnant spider, it could release 200 spiderlings before dying.
The redback, funnel-web, trap door, mouse, white-tailed, recluse, and tarantula spiders are dangerous and deadly, and if one of those had gotten in the house, this would have been a very different story.
Infamous Huntsman spiders . . .
Spiders that crawl under doors . . .
Spiders that hide in cars . . .
I am NOT in Kansas!
