Say hello to my little friend

[Ninurta]

Pleased to make "Super Rack-Nid"'s acquaintance...this way. They do seem alien.

Is your niece a brunette?...like, maybe, Snow White?

In West Texas, at some point around Independence Day, tarantulas will migrate across the highway en masse...for only a few days. But, those few days make for an awesome sight, not to mention, a messy car.

Hope your little caped friend stays in his/her corner of the world, tending its own business. I've tried 'being nice' and giving them space...but the relationships rarely last too long - especially when they deliver a load of babies.

By the by - I didn't know Huntsmen were in the continental U.S. ... My daughter, who has been in Australia for the last two years, has had numerous encounters with some of that variety, and says that they are fast as lightning.

Nah, the niece is a blonde, which is the only explanation I can suss out for her Leftist political leanings. She didn't learn that from either her ma or her pa.

I kept an eye on him on those stairs for 3 days, which was an endless source of amusement for Grace, who was prone to make comments like "when you're done checking up on your pet, you can..." - fill in the blank with whatever she thought I needed to be doing at that instant. BUT - it hasn't been on the stairs now or a few days, which begs the question of just where IS it now?  No, I did NOT just look over my shoulder! Really!

Yup, those Huntsmen ARE remarkably fast given their size. That was the reason for all the hesitation and staring during the epic battle - I didn't want to miss, and was reasonably sure I would as soon as I moved. It's my understanding that they are now found on 6 of the 7 continents, being absent only from Antarctica. The largest spider on record leg span-wise is now a giant Huntsman spider found in a cave in Southeast Asia. While it is not as heavy or bulky as a giant Goliath Bird Eater tarantula, it edges the tarantula out in leg span at around 12 inches. The ones here, thankfully, are not that big, and top out at 6 or 7 inches across the legs for a really big one. Most are smaller, around 4 inches or so, and so can be taken out with only a bazooka or flamethrower, so we don't have to have pocket sized nuke grenades to deal with them.

There are also Parson spiders in this house. Tiny, shiny jet black things. Bitch of a painful bite, but not really all that dangerous. They are pretty shy, and I've only seen two of them here, but two was three too many for my taste.

AND we have "Daddy Long legs" spiders, allegedly one of the most potently poisonous spiders in the world, with enough venom per bite to kill 25,000 humans, but whose fangs are too short to penetrate human skin so, harmless really. Now, what WE always called "Daddy Long Legs" are not spiders at all - I have since learned they are called "Harvestmen" in the rest of the world. When I was a kid, we'd pick them up by one leg and chant "Daddy Long legs, Daddy long legs, which way are the cows?" and they would point with their single long leg in some direction as a response to being picked up. The last time I did that, years and years ago, the little miscreant doubled back on me and tried to lay the fang to my finger, which may be where my arachnophobia came from. I've not picked one up since that day, and that is the ONLY time I have ever even heard of one trying to bite someone - I'm just lucky like that I reckon.

No, the actual "Daddy Long Legs" is not one of those Harvestmen. It is, instead, a delicate, spindly filamentous organism that is hard to see unless you get it between yourself and a light source. They have long, thin, spindly and translucent legs and a tiny body for their size, and usually live in webs rather than patrolling the ground as hunting spiders do. Due to being as delicate as they are, they are easily destroyed with extreme prejudice.

There is also some kind of spider here that "dances" - it rolls along the ground like a dropped coin ambling and teetering along it's edges. And it jumps. I don't know what kind that is, either, and the ONLY other dancing spiders that move like that which I have been able to uncover live across the Atlantic, in the Sahara desert. No idea what the ones here are called. When I was a teenager, I had one chase me across the living room floor, wanting to dance with me I reckon. It would dance straight at me, then stop, gather itself for a jump, and jump at me. It would jump as high as my knees, and straight at me. So, every time it did that, I'd scoot backwards, and it would miss. About the third time it stopped to gather itself for a jump at me, I dropped a loose boot on it and put an end to the dance. Now, that was years and years ago, BUT they are still here, just rare I guess. I saw one about 3 or 4 years ago at work, dancing along a concrete walkway.

And Black Widows. We have enough of those to export them, if anyone else wants any. My garage is full of 'em. When I was working, the same walkway that I saw the dancing spider on had a hollow space under it where Black Widows lived. Once when it rained hard, water collected there and ran them out of their lair up onto the top of the walkway, and we killed 12 of them with bricks in the space of about 15 minutes. Another time, same place, I was outside on break, and there was a crap ton of new trainees out there also on break, and I saw one dangling from a web from the ceiling of an alcove, making way for a young lady's shoulder, one of the trainees. She was so new there - first day - that she didn't even know who I was. So I walked up to her, tapped her on the shoulder, and said " 'Scuse me miss - would you mind stepping three feet thataway?" She looked at me all weird, one of those "just who the hell are you?" looks, but complied, at which point I grabbed the web a couple feet above the widow, lowered it to the ground, and stepped on it. Folks talked about that for weeks, because I didn't freak out about it, nor did I panic her, until she saw what I was doing - I figured calm is better for escape than panic is, so I didn't say anything about what was up until they saw me grab the web, and followed that down to the widow, and hilarity ensued as they all ran in different directions.

For the benefit of @"BIAD"s missus, that building was also infested with snakes. I killed one in the lobby, and we found another in the west wing of the building, but it escaped into a crack in the concrete floor before we could kill it, so I filled that crack with Great Stuff foam insulation to prevent it's re-entry.

The things you have to do when you're a manager, to keep your workers safe!

.