Whats in your backyard?

16-03-2008

Do you guys in Australia have horrible great spiders in your backyards and houses? When I was in Sydney staying at a friends, they did have, I think it was mainly in the wet season that they come indoors. And what about the ones called 'huntsman'- they are awfully big-ugh... (p.s. I'm perfectly happy with snakes.....)

17-03-2008

Lots and lots of spiders of all kinds, including huntsmans, some as big as my hand.

17-03-2008

Loads of fun!
You come home late at night, stagger down the front path to the door and suddenly your face is covered by a whacking great spider web!
The spider has spun it across the path while you've been out.

As you claw the sticky stuff from your face, you are thinking," Hope the spider's not in the middle of this!"

17-03-2008

Summertime in Sydney brings out all the "orb-weaving" spiders, which are prolific web-builders.

If you're the first person to walk down the footpath in the morning, you'd want to walk with your arm in front of your head or risk a face full of spider web (they like to string webs between trees, and it is quite a strong web - so even if you don't get the main part of the web, you'll most likely get one of the stronger supporting strands).

What's more - they repair their webs if they get broken, so even if you walk through one earlier in the day - you will possibly find something being reconstructed within hours.

Fortunately, these guys don't tend to come inside (in my experience), they just cover your yard in webs (if I look out my office window here at home, I can probably count about 50 webs strung from trees and bushes, and from our house across the yard).

We also get huntsmans at times too - these guys love to come inside and are quite active. The largest I've seen at home would have been wider than my hand-span, over 20cm wide I reckon ... but usually the ones around here are 10 - 15cm in leg-span. They don't tend to build webs - but they are prolific insect catchers, so are actually quite good to have around (if you can learn to live with them - which most people can't!!)

I try not to kill them, but gently use a broom to get them off the wall/ceiling and then take them out into the yard and relocate them. I did have one which took a particular dislike to that approach and ran up the broom handle - which is not a pleasant experience - he ended up dead from being uncooperative.

The white-tailed spider is well known and typically lives in garden areas. It has been known to cause nasty ulcerating wounds from its bite - so is best avoided. For this reason, it is not recommended to wander around in your garden in bare-feet and to wear gloves while gardening.

The black house spider likes to build messy webs around the outside of the house, particularly in the corner of windows - we have dozens of these along the southern (dark side) of our house - one day we'll get around to cleaning the windows and getting rid of them - they really are quite unsightly, but don't tend to bother us.

The Sydney Funnel-web is the most notorious of spiders in this area - has a bad reputation, and is known to be aggressive (or more accurately, to "look" aggressive - but they don't tend to chase people - it's just a defense mechanism!). However, they don't tend to come indoors, and it's only the males I think which are venomous (and they are one of the most toxic spiders around). I've never seen one - but then, I don't go looking for them, and the hospitals know exactly how to treat them (my wife was an emergency nurse at the largest hospital near-by and they are used to dealing with spider and snake bites).

Of course, then there is the famous Redback Spider. We had these everywhere in South Australia (where I'm from originally), and not quite so many here in Sydney. If you leave a piece of tin or corrugated iron lying on the ground (typically used for fencing in many parts of Australia), you'll inevitably end up with Redbacks nesting underneath it. The gas-meter box at one of my properties in Adelaide had a Redback nest in it. They are not uncommon in garden sheds or metal garages - anywhere warm and dry.

Redback spider venom is highly toxic - but effective antivenom exists, and death from bites is pretty much a thing of the past (generally, you'd have to be already weakened and unable to get assistance to die from it).

Redback's don't tend to come indoors, but a girl I know in Adelaide was bitten on the thigh by one when she put her jeans on - it crawled into them when they had been left on the floor. That's very unusual. She got quite sick but recovered fully (although mentally is still rather fragile when it comes to spiders - more so than normal, anyway).

Yes, we have a lot of spiders here - but you get used to them and learn to live with them.

More information about spiders in Sydney: Wildlife of Sydney - Spiders - Arachnida

17-03-2008

I don't normally have a problem with snakes, I can stand a metre or so away and admire them but spiders give me the icks. That said, I quite happily live with them, so long as they are outside in the garden. The worse is when you lift a bag of compost or a garden pot and a huntsman, which had been happily living underneath it, runs out and up your arm. That is guarenteed to make me shriek and jump around 'like a girl'.

17-03-2008

I often scoop Funnel-web spiders out of the swimming pool in summer. They appear to be drowned, but "come back to life" very quickly once they are on dry land. The local hospital (Hornsby) collects them for venom extraction.

There's a famous incident where a T.V. newsreader got his words mixed up and solemnly told Sydney that a young woman had been "bitten on the funnel by a finger-web spider!"

17-03-2008

or when they were at the reptikle park and a kookaburra flew down and ate the female funnelweb!

17-03-2008

Ha - that's great.

Not unusual though - we have had kookaburras steal sausages right off the BBQ on more than one occasion!

17-03-2008

yeah my pair of kookas take their food from my hand, they are parent raised the male is ok but the female is the tamest of tame you can scratch her back!

17-03-2008

I will happily handle snakes(non-venomous) but spiders give me the creeps. I fear those Huntsman things (ugh...) would probably prevent me from living happily in a house in Australia. In Uk fortunately we don't have any really huge spiders...

18-03-2008

I usually have a couple of Huntsmans living on the walls inside the house. You can usually pat them and the worst they will do is run away. Even my 3 and 5 year old daughters dont mind having huntsmans living on the walls in their bedrooms. When one large one which had been living in my daughters room died, she took it to school for show and tell.

Huntsmans do look dangerous and were used in the movie aracnophobia.

I also occationaly have a brown snake come through the back yard. The kids are trained to keep away from snakes so as long as they see the snake and keep away from it they are not a problem either.

18-03-2008

"the kids are trained to keep away from snakes" . . . I like that. Ah Huntsmans are great, especially if your stupid enough to build your house near a water supply where those tiny annoying light loving bugs breed. hate them, my parents house spends most of the summer full of huntsmans and the windows under the outside lights are covered with frogs.

18-03-2008

I nearly stepped on a king brown snake not that long ago, surprisingly I was too tired at the time so my 'scared' nerves didn't kick in.
At least one of good aspects of living up here is that I haven't come across as many big spiders as I use to in melbourne, but I have to watch out for barking spiders now and they ain't pretty...

18-03-2008

We had a tiger snake in our house once. Luckily mum came home just as it came in the and she saw it and got dad to kill it. (We usually leave them alone but inside is a little to close for comfort.) And you can pick huntsmans up and play with them if they're not to agro and daddy long legs.

18-03-2008

I couldn't....