Bedtime Companions

Continuing the theme of interesting places to stay Mrs M has booked us into a little wooden cabin on a farm in Johanna.

This is quite fun during the daytime when we get to see some of the farm animals etc, but the as I have been getting locked up ready for bed the last two nights I have come across some hairy eight legged friends also coming in to join us.

Now at home spiders tend not to bother me and any in the house get caught and duly put outside, but in Australia things are slightly different.  There are over 500 different species of spider in Australia and many of them are poisonous.

Last night’s incident was a hand-sized black spider with a bulbous body climbing in the bathroom window which I didn’t know was open.  After a little panicky moment when it looked at me and saw me defenceless, I rushed to the living room and grabbed a chunky magazine to squash it with.  Naively I thought one big blow would do it, but this just seemed to make it angry.  Two more hefty clouts later it finally seemed to stop moving before getting flushed down the loo.

Tonight was the turn of a rather flat looking brown spider about the same size as last nights (approx. 5-6 inches across), sat on the living room floor.  Initially it looked like it was dead, but as I approached it uncurled itself and started heading towards me.  This time it got squashed with the shovel from the fire and then popped on the fire for good measure.

A little internet based spiderresearch has been enlightening and it appears that the black spider was a Funnel Web Spider, and the brown one a Huntsman.

Mr M