Eek!

[Hound dog]

I opened the door to let Betsy in from the backyard. There on the sill of the door is one of the biggest spiders I've ever seen outside of being a pet. HUGE, about 3 inches or so at least. :wildone:

Now normally when they're outside, I tend to leave them alone. But this one is sitting on the darn sill......and last time I tried to shoo one away I wound up with it inside. Uh, no. Sooooo, I squished it. Even squished it's awfully big..........you know how they curl up when they die, it's still lots bigger than most spiders we usually see around here. omg

It was blackish brown with reddish orange stripes leading from it's back down toward it's legs. And it was rather hairy. eww Travis was so stunned he snapped a picture of it.

http://i226.photobucket.com/albums/dd204/Lisaisqueen/EEK/hellspider.jpg

Let's put it this way, when I first saw it I was trying to figure out how one of my Halloween spiders got there until it moved!

 

[flutterby]

It's that time of year. There was one in the garage today, wrapped around the door frame into the house, the size of the palm of my hand. I parked in the driveway and fogged the garage. I couldn't get close enough to it to kill it. I tried and I screamed. LOL!

 

[InsaneCdn]

Double-triple-quadruple EEEEEEK.

 

[TeDo]

Ugh!! I am so glad it was you and not me. When they are THAT big and ugly, I leave them alone and hope like h*** they are gone in the morning. Then I'd shiver and look all over the place EVERY time I went in or out that door.

 

[Marguerite]

We're fairly spider-conscious here. We do have large hairy spiders and our nastiest is black, shiny and aggressive. But we don't often see those inside. The ones that do come inside are hunstman spiders - large and hairy, scary-looking but harmless, although I'm told a bite will hurt and fester a bit. I've never been bitten by one of these. They are about the size of your palm and can slide into narrow crevices. I will try to carry one outside if it gets in, but if it's not cooperative it gets whacked with a thong (aka flip-flop). I reckon that's why Aussies wear thongs - to whack the spiders.

Other spiders - the redback. Mostly outside, but you can get them inside. They're basically a black widow with a red stripe on the abdomen. The funnelweb - that's the black, shiny aggressive one. Potentially deadly, but nobody has died for decades, not since we developed antivenin. I haven't seen one here for decades, but I know they're here. The white-tail (what your spider looks a bit like) which are reputed to cause gangrene from their bite, but that is bow increasingly believed to be an urban myth. They have an abdomen like a short segment of black matchstick with a white head on the match. About that size too, or smaller. The biggest white-tailed spider I've seen was the size of my thumbnail.

Further north in Australia we have mouse spiders and bird-eating spiders. For real. Okay, the birds they eat are small, like finch-sized, but they still get caught and eaten by these spiders. A bite from these will make you sick.
And husband's uncle served in New Guinea during WWII, he said up there spiders were huge. He said you'd see a palm tree with two shadows, then one shadow would get up and walk away...

Marg

 

[HaoZi]

I'd be wondering what the spider was hunting if he thought there was food to be found.

 

[AnnieO]

A couple of weeks ago, I went downstairs and started to set something on the table outside my bedroom door - and almost broke husband's eardrums with my shriek. A FURRY spider about half the size of my hand was just sitting there. husband said he found it dead and was going to take it to the haunted trail. I begged him to put it in a Ziploc bag till he did. EWWW.

Spiders and snakes... What's next?!

 

[muttmeister]

I get BIG spiders in my house this time of year. I pretend I'm on Dancing with the Stars and do a number on their heads. LOL

 

[Hound dog]

LOL mutt

Spiders, snakes, AND mice. Can't forget them. I have like oh......5-6 cats in what I call the "winter" pride outside..........Minnie, Midnight, Ebony, Smoky, and Snow White are constantly hunting. I'm sure they're catching plenty. But I still seem to be getting far too many inside.

Seems like a bad year for pests.

Marg, if I ever get rich enough to visit I'm sticking by you.....spiders that big will make me faint clean away. lol

 

[Marg's Man]

HaoZi, That spider would have been hunting whatever it could catch.

What Marg didn't say is that they modelled Aragog in the Harry Potter films (Hagrid's giant spider friend) on the Australian Redback.
They look just like that - only a bit smaller ;-)


Marg's Man

 

[HaoZi]

My worry is that big spiders hunt comparable prey, so...