WTF?!!!!

So we woke up this morning and discovered that this not-so-friendly fella on the ceiling above us (I pointed, without my contacts, and said, "What's that?" before we both RAN). Neither of us have ever seen a spider so big.

Australia is the land where everything can kill you... and Aussies aren't afraid to remind you of that! They have just about every species of venomous-EVERYTHING here. Megan tried to research what kind of spider he was before we attempted to approach it, and every website she found revealed that we were probably going to die if we got too close.

We finally made the drastic step that only Americans could... we called the non-emergency police number. They chuckled quietly while telling Megan that "with judicious use of a broom we should be ok." He also said that, "they're not particularly venomous. They might give you a good bite but the worse you'll end up with is nausea or a swollen hand." WHAT? She then called our landlord because this issue of not having screens on our windows has OBVIOUSLY led to unwanted pests. Maybe we could get someone to come out and kill it! Nope. She told us to spray it with bug spray, which wouldn't kill it but would allow us to kill it with a shoe. Ew. We were not keen to squish it out of fear of the huge mess it would leave on the wall.

We were, officially, on our own.

We crafted the brilliant plan of opening the window and trying to convince it to exit with the vacuum extension. It scurried a few inches before leaping off the ceiling and nearly eating Megan alive on it's way to the carpet (I stood back screaming and hand flapping... let's be honest). Finally I got the nerve to help out. I grabbed the vacuum and screamed at Megan to turn it on. The trauma of watching (and hearing) it get sucked up made me sick. Ick, yuck.

Good job us. We killed our first Huntsmen spider.

Megan & Jen 1 - Australia 0