For some weird reason, the scary spiders seem to be attracted to me. I wish I knew why because I am not especially attracted to them, although I do find the small ones cute. Luckily for me I don’t have a phobia about spiders like I once was had with snakes otherwise I’d be a quivering mess by now.

My big four fans are the dark and handsome lethal Funnel Web spider, the monstrous Giant (lizard-eating) Wood spiders, The Redbacks and my other endless stalker, the oversized Huntsman.

The Dark and Handsomes

Funnel Web spiders have repeatedly popped up in my life. My first encounters were innocuous enough. As a kid, I’d scoop them out of the bottom of the pool with a net. They’d be sitting in their own bubble of air seemingly waiting for me to rescue them, just like the bees that I’d find paddling around on the top. I would extend the pole with the net down to the bottom and carefully catch them and tip them onto the lawn. Then I’d sit there in awe staring at their black furry scariness. I once found one in the street gutter one night out the front of the house. Well my dog found it. All I saw at first was soft fur and not realizing what it was I tried to pat it with my finger. Yes dumb act I know. Anyway, I backed it into the concrete wall of the gutter with my finger and it wouldn’t move. I thought whatever the hell it was it should move so when it didn’t, I went into the house and grabbed a torch, came back and hello, it was a big fat female Funnel Web that I just had patted. She was not so happy with the tickle and reared back in the attack mode, fangs exposed. Close call really.

Numerous times I unwittingly carried the spiders with me, in my luggage or backpack. They had crept in too close to me.  Once I traveled from home in Sydney to Canberra with a friend and we stayed at her parent’s house. I dumped my stuff in the spare room and later, my friend’s dad found a Funnel Web spider on the floor. When we were about to leave to go home to Sydney, he said,

“You can come and stay again as long as you don’t bring any more spiders with you!”

Righto.

Another time as a teenager, I was bush walking in the high country with a group of others while on a holiday camp and we pitched our tents at Lake Albina near the foot of Mt Kosciuszko. Next day, we walked out and stayed in accommodation for the night. Who should emerge from my pack but my furry friend the Funnel Web. Everyone freaked out because we’d just heard the story of the bush walking lady who had been bitten on the boob and died. A few years later I very nearly sat my butt on one at Blue Lake while tying up my boot laces. I’d been camping there with a group during a 7 day overland walk and we all saw a few of the Funnel Web spiders while we brushed our teeth the night before.

The hairiest encounter I’d have to say was a potentially lethal blunder I made while catching Funnel Webs in the Blue Mountains. These ones sport oversized purple abdomens to go with their furry legs and head. My boyfriend (now husband) and I were catching some to feed some hungry spider-eating common scalyfoots (a type of legless lizard), which we were being temporarily held in captivity. They were the subject of an animal behavior assignment I had as an undergraduate at university. To collect the spiders, Jonno would carefully lift an old log, find the silvery white web sock like structure, (spidy’s home) and using long barbeque tongs, try and pull the sock with spider within carefully out and then place it into the small specimen vile I’d have open ready for him. I had a system. One empty vial in left thigh pocket ready with lid off. One full vial in right thigh pocket with lid screwed on, tight as, ready to go in the bag. Then, I stuffed up. One log housed two spiders. I unscrewed the empty vial. First spider went in there.

“There’s another one, hang on” Jonno said.

I focused on this next spider and placed the first vial, containing a Funnel Web, back in my left pocket without screwing on the lid. We didn’t manage to catch that second spider so we moved on. No luck for ages, walking walking walking. Nothing. Oh well. We went back to the hut we stayed in, for lunch. Before sitting down, I pulled out the open lidded vial from my pocket and to my shock saw the Funnel Web in the web still waiting there in the sock. But if that’s not enough, the night we arrived home, somehow one of these dark and handsomes made a bold move in the bedroom. I still don’t know how but, when I went to get into bed, there was one just sitting blatantly smack in the middle of the bed. Pushy or what!

Giant Lizard-eating Spiders

        Now I suspect that what I am about to tell you now could

        be the subject of your very worst arachnid horrors.

For one not too averse to spiders, this had me on the verge of panic a few times.  In 1996 I was scheduled to meet up with Ian Morris, a local naturalist of the Top End at Nourlangie Rock in Kakadu. He was going to show me the known habitat of the elusive Black Wallaroo. He couldn’t make it that hot and sunny day so I went for a wander by myself. Away from the track and up a gully I went. The rock filled gully turned into a chasm and quickly narrowed with steep tall sandstone walls rising tall on both sides. The light disappeared and the whole place cooled down under the dark shadows. I arrived at a tight section probably around 15 meters across in width. All sound left the dry creek bed I was now climbing up. I saw the first striking white spider web. (This was a mini one). I noticed the ample web size and admired and was a little stunned by a very large neat looking and colourful spider in the centre of the web, not realizing what was to come. This spider was way bigger than my hand span. Very quickly I realized that there were more and more spiders in the webs. Around the corner there were more webs, some with spiders and some not. Where were the spiders? I needed to know where the spider owner for each web were. I used a stick to carefully pull aside the webs so I could move my small body through the opening. This made for very slow traveling. I stalled. I looked around to take it all in.

    Over near the chasm wall was a web with a massive dead eyeless mummified skink hanging in it like a serial killer’s trophy.

The webs crisscrossed the chasm from one side to the other. The gully had narrowed to 7 meters, and the spiders’ sticky nets could capture everything climbing or flying up and down the creek bed. With their overlapping intricate configurations they could also catch creatures moving sideways from one wall to the other. I moved on and up the gully, covered with balls of sticky goo from the spider webs.  I was becoming tired. I lost my concentration and looked where my feet where going and not where my head was placed. I copped the dreaded sticky mess smack across my face and I knew that that the web contained a very large freaky carnivorous spider in it somewhere. Squealing, I threw my backpack to the ground and hopped around trying to pat my body all over to flick off the monster. Had it sped down my shirt to bite me on the boob? Or was it going for my bum crack to settle in my undies? Aahhh! Eventually I had to stop the antics grateful that no one was there to witness me in meltdown. I cursed Ian for rescheduling. I was confident that this was not the way he would have led me. No spider to be found or felt so I moved on but now I was a bit more reckless with the stick I hate to admit, in parting my path through the labyrinth.

I copped another web on my face, so repeated my

panicky dance before moving on, but faster.

The panic was taking over a bit and I really wanted to get the hell out of there. Finally I reached the end of the chasm and hauled myself out of the Kingdom of the Giant Spiders. I breathed again. Scrambling on and up onto the top of the sandstone plateau I sat down and let my heart rate drop down and looked out onto the impressive wide open savanna landscape far below me. More relaxed now, I quietly moved off, explored the top and was lucky enough to spy a shy big male Black Wallaroo who disappeared almost the moment we saw each other. Later, I found another route down, devoid of the spiders larger than a man’s hand.

The Redbacks

The poisonous Red back spiders travelled around in my five favourite glazed pottery pots that housed my native figs. Each house we moved to in the last few decades always had these striking fellows stuck somewhere to my pots. It took me a while to realize I moved them with me. Perhaps from our stuff we transported some into our newly constructed shed near Coffs Harbour. We would visit our acre block and stay in the shed during holidays but one year we arrived and The Redbacks had taken over. They had completely over run the shed in their hundreds, possibly thousands – they were everywhere. It was simply too dangerous to stay in the shed so we found a motel nearby and we had no choice but to eradicate them all the next day.

The Stalking Huntsmen

Stalking Huntsmen are forever entering the house and following me on my trips in the car. If they are not adept one day to enter the cabin of the car then they’ll obsessively hang on the outside. The usual  stakeout spot is the side mirrors.

There they will wait till I’m on a stretch of road that’s exceptionally chaotic, to then pull a fast one across the windscreen and stop and stare at me, face to face as I’m trying to see the road beyond them.

The stop and stare lasts only a moment but is a bit annoying and distracting I have to say. It’s like they need me to see them. Yes I see you. Stalker! But you will not defeat me and make me feel fear! Bad luck to you!

Then I am forever evicting them from the house. I use a tea towel to pick them up super carefully and I try to have their beady eyes uncovered so I know exactly where their fangs are. I open the front door, take a few steps and gently shake them out making sure I see where they go saying “be free be free” you stalkery thing you.

This technique doesn’t always work to plan especially when they are monster sized and have planted themselves to the wall. The worse behaved Huntsman I went to evict and capture with a tea towel, spanned a man’s hand like the Giant lizard-eating Spiders. He had all legs spread wide displaying himself grandly on the bedroom wall. He was way oversized for a huntsman and began to get upset. He started skitting erratically all over the wall until he came to a stop just in reaching distance at head height. As I reached up to cover him over, he somehow did very fast a 180 degree flip midair and landed smack on my face. Aaaahhhh. I screamed, stumbled backwards and landed on the bed. I don’t remember much else with him but I probably then used my backup method, the broom. The spiders scurry onto the brush and I can take them out of the house with plenty of time even if they make a break up the pole towards me. So now when the larger stalkers are on the wall, I persuade them to go onto the floor so they can’t do their worst to me.

Beware if you ever become skilled at spider evictions then that might become your job in your house. I arrived home the other day to a huntsmen waiting to greet me from the kitchen sink. My kids and husband had quietly left him there all day leaving it to me to take him outside. I have to say I can’t complain, the hubster handles the visiting snakes.

I’m not sure when I’ll encounter The Redbacks, the Giant lizard-eating spiders or the Dark and Handsomes again but I have accepted the repeated advances of the Stalking Huntsmen, even though they sometimes overstep the boundaries with their long spidery legs and demand togetherness in the car.

***     *****     ***

You can read more stories in my series about Encounters with Wild Animals such as a Great White Shark, horses, snakes, whales, rock possums and a bull buffalo

And you can read stories on how I Source Strength

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