I Almost Died

Being that we reside in the land which is home to more deadly snakes than anywhere else and of the world's ten most venomous snakes all are Australian, plus, it houses the world's two most venomous spiders, the paralysis tick, the world’s most venomous octopus, the lethal stonefish, the deadliest jellyfish, and of course the innumerable sharks and saltwater crocs (just to name a few), it's only natural that anything that swims, slithers or crawls is considered DEADLY in my book. A bit dramatic or extreme... perhaps, but do you really want to find out what could happen? I think not.

That being said, last night, I almost died. The creepy crawlers are out in full effect since it's summer and they almost got me. In particular, I'm talking about the Huntsman Spider, otherwise known as the Australian tarantula.





Now the locales tell me that these speedy buggers are harmless, but they are just massive and hairy and if you are unaccustomed to them, like I am, you would think the huntsman is the scariest and deadliest creature on the planet. HELLO- they can still bite you and leave you wincing in pain for days. Not to mention that a female can lay up to 200 eggs... um, NOT IN MY HOUSE, BIATCH! Oh, and their name is: HUNTS MAN- need I say more.

Anyway, back to my story... So last night I almost put my hand on a freaking HUGE huntsman. I was just a few centimeters away from touching the nasty beast as I went to grab the rim of the plate where it was residing. Luckily I saw something brown and hairy on the edge of my clean white dish and needless to say, I quickly jumped backed and went running in to the living room to get my knight in shining armour to rescue me. Fortunately, I keep several cans of spider spray locked and loaded for occasions such as these (you can never have too much) and the poor spider never had a chance as we took it down, tag-team style. Phew, that was close... too close for comfort.

Last Christmas we had the invasion of the Redback Spiders...


courtesy of wikipedia

Who must have been living in our Christmas tree and decided to have their babies in our living room. Now these suckers are one of the two spiders (the funnel web being the other) that are venomous and potentially deadly to humans. So you can imagine my hysteria when I woke up one morning to the redbacks running around our floor and hanging from the bottom of our tree. I doused the house in spider spray, wrapped up the tree and tossed it in the rubbish.

So, it looks like this Christmas we get the huntsman... Merry Christmas to us.

Not that I'm keep count or anything, but after last night, that makes four huntsmans killed this week. It's official, the spiders have declared war and I must defend my home. Now, most Australians will probably frown upon me killing the huntsman but I'm sorry, we're under attack and I just can't sleep at night knowing there are tarantulas crawling all over my walls. Can you blame me?

Ah, the joys of living in the "most dangerous" place in the world.