When I was 16 I stayed the night in a sleeping bag at my friends house and woke up with a bump on my elbow, in the next day or two I came out in blotches all over my arm and torso, I went to the doctor and they thought it was hives from an allergic reaction. A week or so later the spot on my elbow started to get gross, turns out it was a spider bite from a presumed white tail. By then my immune system was really low from fighting off the spider ■■■■ and I got tonsillitis, tonsillitis turned into glandular fever. A whole term off school and 10kg weight loss later…white tails ain’t nothing to ■■■■ with. Still have the scar on my elbow from the original bite too.
I had a mate jump out of a car before it had come to a stop due to a Huntzy on the sunvisor. Extraordinary.
Less funny, I remember hearing a fellow motorcyclist tell of the time a spider ran across his helmet visor. On the inside…
If that’d been me, I’d have crashed the bike for sure. I was reminded of this story earlier this week when I watched an ant crawl across the visor whilst I was travelling at 110kph near Gisborne. That was disconcerting enough.
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White tails get instant death sentences when we find them. Evil buggers imo. I swear they know when they’ve been spotted.
Interestingly, I recall very few of them as a kid. In central Vic, the reddies were the worry, the white tails hardly appeared. Now it seems reversed and I wondered if there had been a turf war. Although I’ve come across increasing numbers of Redbacks again over the last couple of years.
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Yep, I’m from north east Vic and our cubby house was definitely more a nest for redbacks rather than white tails. Huntsmans were also in plentiful supply. My (non) favourite memory though was playing in the backyard and wondering what a little flap in the ground was - a hidey hole for trap door spiders apparently. Mum with a kettle of boiling water to pour down there was enough to fix them up though.
BANNED BSD
Come back in 1 week !
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Under a planter box in the garden yesterday morning. I was glad I had gloves on.
She’s a lot flatter now.
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Yep, that’s a spider alright!
Redbacks, whitetails, huntsmen, daddy long legs, wolf spiders, etc., etc., - but why has no one mentioned the Richmond rock spider yet ?
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Pell?
Shifted the wood piles about at home this weekend, in preparation in winter. Stomach and back are now covered in about a dozen itchy (as fark!) red welts courtesy of a white-tail. They don’t come up until about 12 hours after the fact, and stay inflamed for about 4 or 5 days. Happens every time I do it. It doesn’t how much bug spray I empty onto the piles beforehand, one little farker always manages to survive and get me!
This is why white-tails will instantly get the size 11 Hush Puppies the minute they are spotted inside or outside the house. House spiders, huntsmen and daddy longlegs will all the get the glass and piece of paper trick before being ushered outside.
(BTW, the talk of white-tails being catastrophic and flesh-eating is vastly overstated. I suspect they’re much like bees - if you’re allergic to them they’re bad news, if not they hurt a bit and that’s about the extent of it. Any flesh-eating issues are likely the result of people scratching the bejesus out of the bites and them becoming infected).
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Did you mean to post that in the PC gone mad thread?? 
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I feel very guilty right now. I was at work tonight and a large beetle walked across the floor so I let him go about his business, he wasn’t hurting anybody. Later in the evening I noticed him lying on the floor with half his guts spewing out of his bum. I must have stepped on him 
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I’m sure I saw a report somewhere this week of spiders raining from the sky in Brazil!! 
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I can’t do it to anything living apart from ants and blackberry bushes
Eight legged wonder of the world
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Image: The golden orb is a common sight throughout much of Australia. (Ann Jones)
Spiders can be beautiful, timid, fluffy and even give up their lives for the sake of their children.
They can ignite a small flame of fear and make some people nervous, but Dr Robert Raven and Tamara Andersen from the Queensland Museum are different. They just love spiders, and what they have to say might just change how you feel about arachnids.
It’s recommended that you listen to Off Track through a good set of headphones or speakers!
Watch a short video of Dr Raven’s 4WD spider attraction technique.
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Image: The golden orb young disperse by ‘ballooning’ on a thread of silk. (Ann Jones)
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Image: A domed tent spider female guards an egg sack she has woven in waterproof silk. (Ann Jones)
Dr Robert Raven
Senior Curator (Arachnology), Queensland Museum.
Tamara Andersen
Research Assistant, Queensland Museum.
Music in this episode by Gambusia.
I was driving one sunny day with the missus and squids, and as I turned into the sun I flipped the visor down to shade the eyes. Lo and behold there on the other side of the sun visor now at eye level, was a big ■■■■■ of a huntsman.
We locked eyes, acknowledged each other and I casually rotated the visor back into it’s original position (nothing to see here) family none the wiser until a few minutes later when we reached the spiders departure point.
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