It's A Spider, Man!

Spiders, the bane of the lives of most women.  Over here in Jolly Old Englandville, our "big bad spiders" probably aren't that big, nor that bad.  No in comparison to some you others out there deal with.

Me, I'm not worried about the little critters at all.  In fact, quite often me and Jaysen will stun flies and feed them to spiders living in the house.  We're just THAT nice.

However, today, even I, the bravest of the brave had to pause.  We'd just finished dinner, and I was about to clear the table, when the fridge was thrown aside, and a beast crawled out from the doorway to hell that lie beneath.  Our eyes met - well, his eight sets of eyes looked at my two sets of eyes - and he muttered something like "come an' 'ave a go if ya fink yer 'ard enuff" and he promptly rolled up his sleeves, and started to stomp across my kitchen floor.

However, not to be put off, I vaulted over his head - much to his chargrin - and grabbed glass off the draining board.  In one swift motion, I swooped and trapped him.  His talons were actually making sounds against the side of the glass...  The kids were fascinated - at arms length, I should add, and I think they sensed my apprehension.

With a bit of card under the glass, I scooped the fat bastard off the ground, and was really surprised by how big he was.  I HAD to get a picture of it... And, with people putting stuff on their blogs that makes me cringe all the time, I won't apologise for this pic!!

That is a spider scrambling for all his worth, trying to get out of a fairly large glass - and that's my hand in the picture... And I do have pretty big hands folks.

However, not being a meanie, I decided to take the fat git outside and release him back to the wild.  It's my garden, it's wild.  So, careful not to do anything silly like, I don't know, drink from the glass, I tipped it up in a corner, and let him walk out at his own pace...

 

Now, you may be please to know that not five seconds after taking this picture, he darted out the glass, over the top and straight onto my hand.  And you may be even MORE pleased to know that I yelped like a girl and flicked it away into the undergrowth.

I'm not scared of spiders, but He certainly gave me pause.

And one day soon, I may tell all you arachnophobics the story of the times me and Gemma were bitten by normal house spiders, right here in England.  *shudder*