Friday, September 21, 2007

Through a glass darkly...

Recently I have been called upon to evict a number of unwanted house-guests from our home.

Usually I am summoned by an urgent cri de coeur from my wife, who loves these uninvited guests every bit as much as I love heights (if not more.) [See previous posts.]

Personally, I find these guests rather fascinating.

However, I am usually obliged to dispose of them as rapidly as possible. I usually try to do so without causing any unnecessary injury, and for this purpose I normally make use of a glass and a piece of card or strong paper.

Occasionally, though, my aim or my timing may be a little bit out, and this can result in an unintentional amputation, which is distressing for me - not to say for the victim. But most of the time I succeed in capturing the intruders alive and am able to show them the door.

I am beginning to suspect, however, that some of them simply turn around and re-enter by some other secret way. Either that, or they have very large families.


Having spiders appear in our house is nothing unusual, but lately these unwanted visitors seem to be exceptionally huge.

I just caught this one this evening.



To give you some idea of scale, the glass is 7.4cm in diameter (almost 3 inches.)
Its body was about the size of a wasp.
Definitely super-sized!
I think there must be an obesity problem among arachnids as well as among humans!

4 comments:

Shony said...

All I can say is this picture gave me the shivers. I am afraid I am with Dawn on this one-YUK!!! I am scared of these spiders well any spiders to be honest. I manage to remove the wee tiny money spiders but anything bigger I freak out. I have to deal with these things myself so I have reverted to hoovering them up but thats not so good when your to scared to touch the hoover for ages afterwards. I have squashed them but then Im to scared to lift the paper to see if they are still running around. I used to put a cup over them and let whoever appeared at my flat remove them but after kicking the cup over a few times in the dark well need I say more. I do feel bad at snuffing out a life even if it is a horrible spider! I have a spray now that causes them to run away out my flat and if I spray it it turns them off entering also so the can says. So far so good or maybe they are just coming out at night! How did I get so scared of something so much smaller than me? Well my explanation is someone used to run after me with them when I was small and fling them at me. Being an adult I guess I should try get over my fear but I just cant quite manage it. Put that in with anything that flies, buzzes, crawls etc etc

liz crumlish said...

Iain, we're having bother with those same giant spiders in our manse too. Idris carefully puts them outside but I'm sure they just march back in after him. Is it a new breed - or what!

IAIN CUNNINGHAM said...

A new breed of manse spiders? Hmm?

Cherie said...

Uuuhhhh.......full body shiver!

I was looking at your spider photo when Cassie came into the room - SHE GASPED AND MARCHED RIGHT BACK OUT!! She hates spiders.

Now Caroline, well she got up close to the monitor and studied the photo. "He didn't kill it, did he?" Little Buddhistish girl that she is, she was quite concerned. I assured her that, no, you didn't kill it. You're just playing tag with it.