Finally a large spider

When I moved to Australia -- Lo, those many years ago -- it seemed like there were **tons** of fairly large spiders about.

But recently, I haven't been seeing any spiders except for teeny little things, about the size of ladybugs.

But!  This afternoon, B1 (Blondie Boy) asked to show me something in the hall.  "What's that?", he asked, pointing up near the ceiling.

Ah!  A spider!  And a decent-sized one, too.

I got a duster-on-a-stick from the broom closet, and had The Girl wave it about to the right of the spider.  Meanwhile, I got up on a stepstool with a plastic container from the "dirty dishes" counter, and a flattened cereal box, to catch it.

I wasn't worried about it being venomous:  as a rule of thumb, the smaller ones are the venomous ones; the larger ones don't need to be.


I took it outside and took a few snapshots:

 ...and...

And then I released it, and tried to get it to run away to safety (I've heard that large spiders and small spiders compete for territory:  so having large spiders around is actually a good thing).

Here are some photos (with rules with inches, and centimeters) for size comparisons.

 

So -- a 5" leg span?


I showed the photos to The Lady.  She reckons its a huntsman.  I believe her.


--GG