For perspective, this is how big he is on the net curtain:
A few years ago this creature would have sent me hysterically screaming and insisting on its demise. But I seem to be overcoming my fear of spiders and actually choose to leave this one alone in the hopes that he will eat the flies and mosquitoes that sometimes come visiting.
Then yesterday I was standing at the kitchen sink and looking outside a dark blob on the eaves caught my eye.
Now that is a mega spider! Even this girl from Africa was impressed. (Let me tell you, I've seen some spiders in my life.)
When Grant came through a while later I wanted to show him but the spider had moved. I found him on the bricks at the top of the wall:
When the kids came home from school I wanted to show them but he'd gone. I thought no more about it until I was preparing to go to bed (Grant was at work). As I walked through the vestibule to my room I saw this beside the laundry room threshold:
Oh HAIL no. No, no no. Not on my turf.
As photogenic (and no doubt hungry) as this guy was, he had to go. No way, no how, was I wandering to the loo in the midnight darkness with this character lurking. Uh-uh.
So I got a glass and a piece of cardboard and took him out into the night and threw him and ran back inside and stuffed a blanket along the bottom of the door (where, I may add, there is a gaping gap). *Shudder*
For the record, the glass only just fit over him and it is 8cm (just over 3 inches) across.
Still, I let him live and handled him without breaking down completely. That's major progress right there.
