Last night (or rather, this morning) at 3:30 I was awoken by my lovely wife calling for me from down the hallway. " Adam, there's a big spider out here and I need you to kill it." Not exactly what you want to hear at 3:30 am. For some reason Tara felt she needed to go downstairs to get her phone in the middle of the night and found her path blocked by this menacing figure.
Now I know there are some big spiders here in Australia but maybe Tara and I had differing definitions of the term, "big spider." We did not. To give you an idea of what this spider looked like without any exaggeration, take your hand and hold it with all your fingers outstretched like you're making a number 5. Then put a loonie in your palm. That would be an accurate representation of what was making its way up the wall towards me: the spider's body was the size of a loonie and its legs were about the length of your fingers (but much skinnier of course). Although Australia is home to several varieties of the deadliest spiders in the world, they are all quite small. The big ones are harmless and I assumed this guy was a Huntsman spider.
After a momentary freak-out, I collected my wits and decided how to handle this situation. Since we're not yet fully moved in, I was lacking the proper tools for the job. Baseball bat or tennis racket were the first things that popped into my head. I had to act fast or I would risk the spider making a move and I would never find him again. I quickly gathered a towel and garbage can, the best weapons I had available. At this point I wasn't sure if I would be using the garbage can to capture the spider or to bludgeon it with. I chose the latter.
I got in close to where he was sitting on the stairway wall and smashed at him with the base of the garbage can. Not a direct hit so he fell onto the stairs and scurried around the corner. I was right behind him, taking mad swipes with the garbage can until he made it behind a box. At this point I knew I had him cornered so I prepared for the showdown. I pulled the box away from the wall and the spider was sitting in the corner under an extension cord. Pounding away with the garbage can, the spider succumbed to the beating and I emerged victorious.
What was most troubling was how this giant spider got into our house. When we moved into the house last weekend, I noticed that there is quite a large gap on the bottom and sides of our front door, possibly as large as 1 cm in places. I don't know why I didn't take care of this right away, but as a result this spider just waltzed right in the front door. Now I can't get some weatherstripping fast enough but it will probably have to wait until next weekend since all the stores close by 6 pm during the week. Hopefully we don't get any more unwanted visitors before then
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