Australian Adventures Part 2

I had not done any research prior to my visit to Australia, but I had watched the discovery channel and every time there is a list of top ten dangerous animals they seem to have all originated and lived in Australia.  I am terrified of spiders, I know they are small but there are a ridiculous number of them in Australia that can kill you with one little bite.

Upon my arrival at the dorm room where my mom was living, I was confronted with a few strange Australian phenomenons. The doors require more effort to close as they rub along the carpet at the bottom, reason for this, so the spiders can’t crawl under your door. Yup you got it, now I am freaking out.  How am I supposed to sleep here for the next six weeks! There is no way, find me a ticket home I’m out….  Apparently when my mom’s flat mates discovered my arachnophobia issues they decided to continue to deliver the shots. Everyone in there had a story to tell me about his or her encounter with spiders.

One of the native Australians in the flat had the worst story of them all. One evening as he was studying in his room, he saw a spider crawling across his pillow. Not happy with company of this sort, he decided to take one of his textbooks and kill it. He slammed the textbook on his pillow killing the spider, however once he hit the pillow it was like a scene out of arachnophobia.  Hundreds of tiny baby spiders scattered out from under his book.  Yup you got it, mom laid her eggs in his pillowcase. Now had this been anyone else they would have freaked out and run for the hills, nope he calmly went and got the vacuum and proceeded to wash his sheets, and vacuum all the spiders up like it was no big deal. My mother came out to the sound of the vacuum cleaner going and asked what was going on as it was quite late in the evening. Mom got no sleep that night and I proceeded to freak out for the remainder of my time in the flat.

Now as horrible as this is, it is not the worst. The top ten deadliest shows don’t show the worst spider, no it may not be able to kill you but it might eat you while you sleep (ok, that may be slightly dramatic).  I don’t know what is worse, the small spiders you can’t see coming that will kill you, or for an arachnophobic person to see this one huge spider, that won’t kill you, coming. I have never seen something so hideous in my entire life. The huntsmen spider is so disgusting, even the name makes me squirm. It is by far the largest spider I have ever seen. For those of you not terrified of spiders I have inserted a link to a you tube video showing the size of this horrible creature. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRV4d9LCawU