“The Huntsman” [Spider]

With apologies to any movie or other entity which carries a similar title, this is the only title suitable for this story.

As you may recall, my daughter Hannah is now in Sydney, Australia, studying to be a Veterinarian, a doctor of creatures, great and small.  She has just completed her first mid-term exam.

Arriving in early February, it is now the end of April, 2018.  Initially she lived with a very nice woman sharing a home.  However, some problems arose with allergies and something call “tobacco smoke,” which moved Hannah to find a “granny flat” near the University.  It has proven to be both a delight and a challenge.

Besides the initial inconveniences which appears to be all over Australia, as no air conditioning, no dryer for one’s clothes, as I shared in the first story about “Hanging Clothes on the Line,” Hannah has discovered another exciting fact about Australia.  Apparently, very few persons use exterminators for insects and other things that like to crawl in the night.

Hannah moved into her second home in Australia, a one bedroom ‘granny flat.’ Here she happily settled down the first night in her bed to rest.  Sometime, in the middle of the night, she heard something that sounded like wings fluttering and felt a plop on her night shirt.  The light from her phone revealed to her great surprise a large brown cockroach.  She quickly dispatched him to the oblivion of cockroach heaven, or never, never land whichever comes first, said something not repeatable in polite company and went back to bed.

The next morning with investigative eyes she discovered many more, but smaller, numerous cockroaches.  It is hard to enjoy one’s breakfast in the presence of so many things that crawl and like to chew on crumbs of food.  After a conversation with her ever attentive dad, she began a search for an exterminator.  It took a few days, as she found in Australia exterminator companies are rather scarce and hard to find.  Eventually, she found a nice man who owned his own company, so he came over, quoted her a price and she contracted to have her ‘granny flat’ sprayed.

The nice exterminator man said her cockroaches were Australian cockroaches, which could be killed with spray on the floor.  The other type, the “German cockroaches”, which are also common require bait to kill them.  So he sprayed the floor of the apartment and left.  He gave strict instructions not to mop the floor for a month, to give time for the peculiar formula to work its magic and kill most if not all of the cockroaches.

Hannah was not surprised to find some 5,000 cockroaches large and small with bellies turned up to the air over the next several days, which were promptly swept off the floor and out into the yard.  To her chagrin, she discovered the cats from neighboring apartments arriving.  They promptly ate the dead cockroaches lying on the ground, considering them a rare delicacy.  She has yet to find a cat dead from the cockroach poison, so apparently it is safe not only for humans, but feline creatures, too.

So being satisfied that eventually all the cockroaches big and small have been eliminated Hannah went back to focus on her primary concern, that is her studies in Vet School, and upcoming mid-term exams.  She also related another problem which was obtaining internet Wi-Fi in her apartment, which is still ongoing.  There is something about the need for the twenty something generation to maintain internet connection at all times.  Apparently, something akin to a “panic attack” sets in when the Wi-Fi signal is not there.  I suppose this is related to the computer, cell phone, the Apple watch, and other a sundry devices which draw life from the internet and bring daily information to the inquisitive brains of young people.  But this is a story for another day.

On the third day exactly, more or less, after the extermination of many cockroaches, most, if not all of an entire population, Hannah reports to me, as a reliable witness (I have pictures!) are now dead!  She relates on the third day following the great extermination, she was sitting eating her breakfast, when about 15 inches from her head she noticed an unusual movement on the wall.   She caught this out of the corner of her eye and turned to focus.

Hannah reports she discovered a large spider which was seven, yes, that is SEVEN inches across.  It had long, furry legs and color of brown!  She dispatched it quickly into never, never land with the bottom of her shoe.  Look this spider up on the internet.  It is as large as a tarantula, eats cockroaches and geckos and other unfortunate creatures it enjoys for food.  I do not believe it consumes fingers and toes, but then who can be sure?

A smaller Huntsman came the next day down this same wall, apparently looking for its mama, and meant its own untimely demise.  Both the large spider and the small one were looking for breakfast.  With all the cockroaches gone they had nothing to eat and they came down from the attic looking for food.

Hannah and I discussed at length the moral dilemma of what she had done.  I proposed that she should have allowed the big mama spider to live and continue to consume cockroaches, since this is not a known dangerous spider to humans.  She replied that I was not living in her apartment and the thought of sleeping in an apartment with a seven inch spider was simply too much to ask of any reasonable person.  Most of those to whom I have related this story agree with Hannah.  She said she had considered catching it and putting it outside her home, but feared it might return to its familiar haunts.  I am still mourning the loss of such a magnificent spider, but then who am I to judge between a young woman and her resident Huntsman spider.

I have been told, but not confirmed there are at least 836 different species of spiders in Australia (Wikipedia), and some are known to be poisonous to humans (consider the Sydney Funnel-web and the Redback Spider).  Hannah related that while at the farm of the university while learning to handle sheep, another large spider with a white stripe came out of the barn onto the area they were working.  Even her professors did not know what kind of spider it was.  So apparently, Australia is still a land of discovery and adventure, even to those who have lived there all their lives.

Dorothy and I plan to visit our daughter this December.  Since there is room for only one person in the ‘granny flat’, we will be staying in a hotel.  I presume that we will have air conditioning, a hot shower and all the comforts to which Americans are accustomed.  I presume and assume we will not find Huntsman spiders in our hotel room.

Now this would present to me a real dilemma, suppose I was confronted with the same situation as my daughter, in my first foray into the Australia wilderness while sleeping in my hotel bed.  What would I do with a seven inch spider?  What would Dorothy do?  How would you react, with the bottom of your shoe, or a gentle escort outside?  Is this a moral dilemma?  This is between one of God’s good creatures and me.  I wonder what I would do…I am still thinking…   Bill W