Gingerbread Man on 8/5/2006 at 06:51

---

There's a goddamned gigantic spider in my garage.

I am not one to exaggerate the size of spiders, so believe me when I tell you this thing is the size of my hand. I reckon it's easily 8 inches across (legs included, but legs not entirely straight) and is probably about 3/4ths the size of that infamous Clock Spider.

It is huge, it is scuttly, it is hairless, and I swear it's purple. Or purplish-blue. Or something of that general shade. It is not a tarantula -- the abdomen is very long, and that's where the purplish markings are. The marks run lengthwise, too.

An evening spent with every Google search term I could think of generated nothing useful. The closest I've come to seeing the general shape of the thing is one of those Net Casting spiders. Or a banana spider perhaps. Thing is, there's recently an Exotic Pet Store opened near here, so it's entirely likely that one of my idiot neighbours bought a Gigantic Goddamned Purple Spider and it got away from him. There's no WAY it's indigenous -- we don't have big spiders (not THAT big), and I've never heard of anything that colourful living outside of a jungle.

My fear is that it is poisonous enough to kill a cat or make one of my dogs deathly ill. Well, my fear is also that I wake up with that thing on the wall near my bed, but that's a bit more remote as far as possibilities go.

I beg the Australians... What the fuck is this thing? You bastards are the only people I know who have fauna approaching this level of Shit Your Pantsness. I wish I had a picture of it to show, but it scuttled behind the shelves when the lawnmower got moved, and the garage is a hideous mess with really inadequate lighting. I am not looking forward to trying to flush the bastard thing from its lair, but I shall enlist my youngest brother to help on account of he has a veritable arsenal of BB guns.

Here is a hastily-scribbled artist's rendition of the fiend:

http://www.ttlg.com/gbm/ian.jpg

And here is what I believe the spider must look like when I'm not shrieking and running away:

http://www.ttlg.com/gbm/wtfspider.jpg

Remember, that thing's the size of my HAND with its legs in scuttle mode. So that makes it a good eight inches across, and probably ten or eleven with legs outstretched fully. It could facehugger me. :(

Needless to say, I'm not going in the garage ever again, not after tomorrow's Arachnosafari with the flashlights and the cameras and the pellet guns and the kill it with fire. Because that's just ridiculous. What's next? A fucking shark in the garage? An octopus? A BABOON?

No, no, this is waaaaay past where I draw the line. Fucking tropical spiders the size of my head? Bollocks to that. I'm just going to set the building on fire and hope for the best.

Any clues? Ideas? Or shall we just talk about crazy-ass nightmare bugs and watch the Australians haul out some tales that will make the rest of us scream and smack our monitors in primal terror and disbelief?




<small>seriously, though... I'm mostly worried that it's a danger to my animals. God only knows what it EATS. Fucker must subsist on mice or something, and that's not a pleasant thought -- not that I have anything against mice being eaten, god knows my wee pussycat eats mice, squirrels, birds, moles, whatever... but also maybe he might try to eat a goddamned facehugger spider, and I don't want that to happen because there's a good chance he won't win that one</small>

37637598 on 8/5/2006 at 07:07

---

If i saw a purple, LARGE spider in my garage, you people in Australia would hear me SCREAMING! And when I was far enough away from the spider, I would be shaking and moving and jerking as much as i can as if i had millions of spiders all over me, and I would then sit down and think about it and start shaking again and from that point on, I would be PARANOID!!! and anytime i'd see a clump of dust or hair, or anything small-ish and fast moving, I would shoot up and start shaking and moving around. Thats what alot of people do for some odd reason... I think the shaking is to try to get the spider off of you even though you KNOW its not really on you.

Microwave Oven on 8/5/2006 at 07:50

---

"I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."



Somebody had to say it.

Schattentänzer on 8/5/2006 at 08:00

---

What Tonamel said, but you could try to browse (http://bugguide.net/node/view/1954/bgimage?from=0) here first.

Did you by chance forget to make your annual offerings to Great Anansi?

Gingerbread Man on 8/5/2006 at 08:40

---

That's a great resource, that Bugguide... Bookmark'd for sure.

I've been thinking a lot about the short encounter with the mammoth spider, what with all my looking at picture after picture and trying to whittle it down to at least a general sort of spider, and I think probably (shamefully, after my LOL I DON'T EXAGGERATE THE SPIDER talk) that a combination of surprise, poor lighting, shadow, and sudden horror may have left me with the impression that it was a bit bigger than it probably is. But not by much.

I stand by my guess of 8" or so on the legs, though obviously that's a little difficult to gauge when it's moving and the light is shitty, but I'll amend that to a probable 8" at full stretch. My best guess as to the body dimensions would be something like a half-inch to an inch wide and 2.5 to 3 inches long, maybe. Make no mistake, that's still a fuckoff big spider. The legs were very long and thin, as was the body (in a way... it wasn't bulbous, let's put it that way)

Christ, I'm talking about it in the past tense. What if it's talking about ME in the past tense? :o

Anyway, thanks to Schatt's link I've found a couple more that look very close. Unfortunately, the ones on the site are ridiculously tiny compared to the Thing In My Garage. They look very similar, and I'd be tempted to chalk it up to individual variation, but unless some mutant thing has Hulked its way from being 5mm long I think I've not yet found what I'm looking for.

(http://bugguide.net/images/cache/FQ40OQ50Z0ZQCRSQJRIQVRYKDQ20CRXQDR3KVRLQOQ50WRRQOQP0S0E000IQTRSQTR0QTR203RIQL020TRSQ00SQ.jpg) This one's got the right sort of body shape, though perhaps my purple horror is a tad more tapered and elongated in the abdomen. There's a long way to go from 15mm to the lurking abomination behind the shelves, though.

(edit)

(http://bugguide.net/images/cache/TZKR3ZSR0H3LOLSZ2LYLVLQZTLZZOZFL6LHZJZRZJZKR3Z3LDZRZWLHZFZ7RTZXRCZKRZHGRVLXZSH7RCZSRJZER.jpg) Oh Christ I just saw this one

If that was darker, and more purply-black (like a deep almost iridescent kind of purple, but not iridescent) and a bit bigger. Goddamnit, that's a fucking huntsman, isn't it? That's a goddamned Clock Spider. I'm totally burning the garage tomorrow. And then I'm going to talk to my goddamned neighbour who, it should be pointed out, is from New Zealand and may or may not have been to sodding Australia recently.

Huntsman seems a bit furry, though. Although when I said it was hairless, I meant it wasn't hairy like a tarantula, which is the only freaky-large spider I actually know about first-hand.

Pray for me.