New Housemate

When I got home late last night, I discovered that we had a new housemate. She had moved in whilst I was at Mutual. Despite her rather large body size, it took me a while to notice her--because she was on the roof of our dinning/rec room.

For those of you who have never lived in Australia, this is a good opportunity to introduce you to the huntsman, a common house spider here, and the species of this particular new housemate. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so I've attached a photo which I took after I got back from home teaching tonight.


Unfortunately, this photo doesn't really reveal much about the spider's actual size. For all you know, she's a tiny little thing whose image I've enlarged. I really wanted her to be close enough to something recognisable that one could compare her size to, but she was on the ceiling again tonight (though in the kitchen this time), so you'll just have to trust me that I've sized the photo such that it's pretty much actual size on my computer screen.

I mention that she was on the ceiling again tonight because that is not where she was when I woke up this morning. I know because I specifically looked for her. A spider this size and colour is quite easy to spot on a white ceiling, and she was definitely not there. There's only one thing worse than having a huge spider on one's ceiling, and that's having had a huge spider on one's ceiling that could now be hiding anywhere.

And you'd be surprised where a giant spider like this can hide. I took a break from research about 12:30 this afternoon to make myself a couple of very fine tuna-melts on wholemeal bread. I was busy toasting them in our sandwich press when I noticed something odd and slightly organic looking protruding from under Troy's jar of Chittagong curry powder. Without thinking, I lifted up the jar, and there was our new resident.

How she managed to wedge herself under a glass jar filled with 300g of curry powder is beyond me. I thought she might take this opportunity to shift her hiding spot, but she didn't, so I just put the jar back down over her. What I should have done was get my camera and take a picture of her next to the jar for comparison, but my sandwiches had finished cooking, so I put it off until after eating, and, when I went back to snap her photo, she was gone.

Consequently, I was quite happy to once again find her on the ceiling this evening. Of course, she's already managed to disappear again after I took the photo. And before you ask, I've already checked under the curry jar; she's not there.

Now, if I were a fair dinkum Aussie, none of this would bother me. Having a huntsman or five running around one's wainscoting at night is as ordinary as things come in these parts. After all, despite being huge and hairy, a huntsman is nothing to get excited over--unlike the hundreds of other spiders we have here which can actually kill people.

Tonight, I'm trying to be a real Aussie.