Car Spider

Early tonight I was teaching adult beginner swim lessons and Andy was picking me up. He got there early, decided to go to the bottle shop next door first and then wait in the pool parking lot. On his way to the bottle shop a large spider darted quickly across the windshield (outside) and he nearly crashed the car. He got the beer and made it back to the parking lot in one piece, and as he was waiting for me the spider ran across the windshield again! He kept an eye on it, with the windows closed, and finally as I was coming across the darkened parking lot got out to try to kill it but it had disappeared. He related the tale to me and I didn't want to get in the car, but did, and then spent the 8min drive sitting stiffly, twitching at every foreign touch, even my hair falling on to my shoulder.


Now in Canada and Texas (and England where Andy's from) when you see a spider you don't really care much. Yeah it might bite you, but it doesn't hurt much and can't kill you. It's also not very big (I saw a bigun in Austin once outside, I think it was a tarantual). Now when you see a spider in Australia, you get scared. And rightly so. There are some nasty and aggressive spiders here, and except for a few, are hard to identify in a single glance (St. Andrew's Cross spiders are easy but low risk, oh and female Red-Backs (close relative of Black Widows) are easy too and fatal).


After hearing Andy's description of a 15cm diameter, fast, dark coloured guy with a big body, I thought immediately it's probably a Huntsman. No, no says Andy, it could've been anything! And I think it's living on the outside of the car somewhere because it kept coming back!


So I did some research online and I still think it's a Huntsman, which are low risk and not aggressive. Two separate websites (one government issued, so it must be accurate) used the fright of seeing a Huntsman dart across your dashboard as a reason to be scared of the unsightly beings. They flee and only bite if corned, like if you were to put a shoe on that had one inside he'd bite ya.


SO, I will sleep well tonight knowing, or at least thinking, Mr or Mrs Huntsman is harmless and will be gone in the morning and will not jump on me and bite me when I get into the car tomorrow :)

My new best friend... tomorrow we'll make snow angels for two hours, then we'll go ice skating, then we'll eat a whole roll of Tollhouse cookie dough as fast as we can, and then... we'll snuggle.