Regular freezes keep this shit down.

It's safe as houses. Here's a video made for the Australian Tourist Commission. (Hint: it's comedy)

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I kept thinking, "that doesn't look like a snake eating a spider"

and then, "what's the big deal about a snake eating a spider" before seeing the pics.

If it would have been a snake I would be dead by now. OH A SPIDER THAT EATS A SNAKE...

Eff that, I'm so seriously NOT moving to Australia.

Until now, I considered that a reasonably safe distance...

Awesome pictures!

Kill them with sticky, radioactive, chemically toxic fire, then put them in a heavy container and sink them to the bottom of the Mariana Trench.

Not long ago I had a spider about the size of a half-dollar crawl (run) out from the frame of my couch, out from under the cushions, and straight up my chest toward my face...

I think my wife might still have evidence of the bruises I put on her trying to get away from it.

And read Hatchling's post below.

be large enough to drag me out the door.

Can't explain it, don't understand it, but I live with it.

My uncle tells me stories of sleeping on the ground in Vietnam and having spiders big enough to make the leaves rustle as they moved past... I would have either died of exhaustion or been killed due to inattentiveness from lack of sleep.

I'm thinking ancient aliens used it as a lab or something, maybe did some chemical and nuclear tests, and decided, "Let's just leave all this shit here. It's too strange to spread around".

"Jumping up on chairs and screaming for the ex to kill them" terrified.

Then we spent a year in Australia. We had to give up our bedroom to a wolf spider that was as big as my hand.

Now I look at our itsy bitsys and go "meh" and move them out doors.

On second thoughts...why even do that? Wolfies are beautiful creatures. Leave 'em alone and you'll be fine.

Our Australian friends laughed their asses off at us.

Plus, we got off on the wrong foot with the "Wolfie" My ex took two steps toward it with a raised shoe, then the wolfie took two steps toward him waving legs and mandibles. We decided he needed the bedroom more than we did. He was gone or hidden in a day or so, and we had been reassured he was okay, so we moved back in.

They kind of look similar and so far I've had four huntsmen in my house in the past week and the most massive of them was on my bedroom wall and took half a can of fly spray to kill. It was still massive when I vacuumed it up the next morning even though it had shrivelled to about a quarter of its original size...



(I'd rather have a mouse crawl all over me than hold one of those things in my hand!)

I've even had small scorpions come into the house, but what flyspray won't kill, a boot will. I just whimper a lot when I'm getting rid of them, and I try to ignore the irrational fear that a whole bunch of rogue spiders will appear and take revenge on me for the killing of their relative

I used to have Huntsmans in my hand, on my shoulder, on my head. They are absolutely benign (I know they can bite, but it never happened to me - I was just gentle). Plus they are gorgeous.

Be afraid. Be very afraid. The 101st Flying Huntsmans are on their way. You will not be spared.

That's exactly what it looked like. Is it any wonder we let it have the bedroom after it waved it's feelers at us?

ROVING.FREE.THROUGH.MY.HOME!! I VERY rarely kill spiders I find indoors. I usually scoop them up and put them outside.

Everything else is served an eviction notice.

It's for their own good. The daddy long legs are always high in a corner, anything within reach of a cat paw in in danger of being treated like a cat toy.

Weird.

Anthony is also often shortened to "Tone" (as well as the (probably) more usual "Tony&quot .

Aussie nicknames can be quite confusing. Short people are often referred to as "Lofty". Redheads are often called "Bluey".

with his hand right next to that damn spider. You've got to be kidding me.

While the steroid spider is not covered in this informative piece, a few others are.

We lived out in the country. My then-seven-year-old daughter was with me. It was hard teaching her that every snake in Australia is poisonous and there are poisonous spiders, too, without scaring the shit out of the little kid. We had a wood-burning stove in the kitchen that heated a hot water tank next to it as well as an oven and cook top. We had a wood pile in the back yard. I was instructed to ALWAYS use the rake next to the wood pile to pull off a log before picking it up because snakes loved wood piles. My daughter was NEVER allowed to bring in wood. There are rules to live by in snake country -- never go out on the pavement after dark (they like the warmth and you might not see them), never run through grass (it doesn't give them enough time to get away from you), never reach into something you can't see into (both spiders and snakes). In spite of all that, I loved Australia and would probably go back there to life if I had the chance. The people were very nice and they even liked Americans!

Where is Samwise....?

...but because they have some of the most venomous and deadly wildlife on the planet..

There are some dangerous insects and snakes there, but unless you live in the VERY wild, you won't run into them, and help is always nearby.

I stay in the towns mostly, and I only saw a spider in the museum of Nat'l history

but I recall that a brown snake (extremely poisonous) was found in one of the swanky areas of Sydney, much to the horror of all. And where there is one, there are probably more. After I left, my mother and sister lived in Newtown and lived by the rule that snakes could be found ANYWHERE and to beware where ever you are.

When I lived there, we had a motel and restaurant in Berrima, 85 miles south of Sydney. I met a nurse who worked at the hospital in neighboring Bowral who told me that the most common spider bite is on male genitals. The spiders like to be under a toilet seat, along comes a man with some sit-down business, and boom, there's a bite. Not fatal, but painful and requires treatment.

By an invisible spider either a Black Widow or Brown Recluse which fanged me on the toe--my entire leg became paralyzed up to the hip and it took several days for the swelling to go down--we were too poor to go to the emergency room, altho I should have, if I had been smart!

also, my brothers dug a hideout cave in the way-back of my parent's 10-acre ranch--come summer it was always home to a rattler or two which they enjoyed shooting at--

I know the snakes in Australia are scary, but I haven't gone where they mostly live, up in the jungle. No wonder everybody was freaked out when they found one in Sydney!