h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

A bit of background info: The world's deadliest spider lives in my backyard in my gardens and when ever it rains the male of the species goes wandering and more often than not they'll end up in my pool where they'll sink to the bottom and appear dead but such is not the case as they can live in the pool for up to 24-36 hours surviving on trapped air bubbles around their abdomen and bubbles caught on their legs.

I scoop them out and tip them onto the tiles surrounding the pool and usually after a couple of hours warming up in the sunshine they slowly move back into the gardens.
Yesterday I 'saved' five of them and they all eventually started moving again while I was watching them as I read the papers. My partner asked: "Why do you do that, why don't you just kill them as they're the world's deadliest spider and if we get bitten we could die?"

I'm the gardener in this household and occasionally I'll dig one up so I'm used to them and I'm not concerned by them but the majority of people are and they stomp on them and squash them with whatever is on hand and don't think twice about. If there was a call for a funnel web cull there would be huge support for it, however impracticable that might be.

If you had them at your place would you kill them or if you saw one walking across your path would you step on it?

I would leave them alone. I had a black widow in my barbeque and I got it on a stick and flicked it over the back wall into the railroad right of way. I didn't really want it in my yard, but I didn't want to kill it. I don't know if I'd go to the trouble of fishing them out of my pool though.

It's an easier question to answer when you're a mother.

I'm with you, Keith. I don't know anything about them... what do they eat? what else might they eat? Might their foodchain blossom & cause other problems if they all disappeared?

A helping hand when needed else leave 'em alone. They have as much right to be here as we do.

Hmm, well, my remark about how being a mother makes the decision easier is because I lived with black widows who came into my house, where I and my small children lived, every fall when the weather got cold.
I would spend every evening after the kids went to sleep going around and killing them. There are plenty of black widows, they are not endangered, and they would have no problem envenoming anyone, to the point of killing them, in order to survive.

Sidney funnel-web spiders actually are a worse danger because they are only dangerous to monkeys and humans, and deadly only to the monkeys and children I gather. I thought about this long and hard and actually have felt guilty killing black widows in the past but now I know I will not. Your question helped me clarify for myself my priorities so thank you.

From the wikipedia article on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sydney_funnel-web_spider

"In September 2012, it was reported that stocks of antivenom were running low, and members of the public were asked to catch the spiders so that they could be milked for their venom. One dose of antivenom requires around 70 milkings from a spider."

So there's a good use for your saving them from the pool. It evidently is the males that they need.

If I found myself sharing living space with dangerous endangered and protected animals I would leave.

**If I found myself sharing living space with dangerous endangered and protected animals I would leave.**

Lol, well don't ever move down here then.

It's actually pouring cats and dogs here at the moment in away that the tropics can only do, just a huge vertical sheet of water pummeling down as I type and with the pool lights on I've spotted my first funnel web attempting to swim and getting blasted by the huge drops of rain.

So I'll be out later on fishing him out and moving him on. I'm too far from Sydney to send him to the antivenom wallahs anyway. As I do the fishing out I'll be tip toeing with a careful eye on the pool surrounds as the nocturnal Bull Ants are out and about and the big warrior class buggers are 40mm long and they pack a punch that lifts like you wouldn't believe.

My wife called me to the garbage bins a couple of weeks ago one morning to show me the discarded shedded skin of a Carpet Python and was marvelling at it's size and I unrolled it for her to see how long it was and it was a bit of a shock to find that after we measured the skin from the wide end to the tail(2.1 metres long)I realised we didn't have the end with the head on head it so a quick search and there it was wedged in the fork of two palm trees.

We unrolled this bit and there was his head and this bit measured 1.8 metres so that's a good sized snake and it would eat your moggy no probs or a small dog like my stupid maltese.

But yes the bitey scratchie itchy inducing venomous things are everywhere here and only last Sunday we paid $500 to our vet to save our dogs life after I found a fully engorged paralysis tick embedded in his upper lip and the little blokes back legs were giving way(a certain and dangerous sign of a advanced tick envenoming). I pulled a grass tick off my forehead after a gardening session and two weeks later the wound on my head is still red+itchy.

But of course it's just all part of life here and you just deal with it don't you same as you guys deal with all that rain and miserable weather you get or traffic jams on the A5 or whatever.

The python is great because he gets up in the roof and eats rats and then when he's finished with them he'll make inroads into the local Ringtail possum population and also grab the odd magpie of other bird so he's good to have a round.

I won't bore you with the poisonous snakes tales...they're in my garden but you just get used to not putting yourself in a position where your going to disturb them too much and most of them slither off unless they're a bit cranky at you.


So yeah I'm not into killing things that could easily kill you, after many years I even got the trouble+strife to call me before she whacks the bread plate sized Huntsmen spiders a not too hairy member of the Tarantula family or close relative there of. You grab a plastic mixing bowl and slam it over the spider then you slip a sheet of paper between it and the wall and then you go outside and throw the whole kit+caboodle out on the lawn and shoo the big fella away. They like living inside because the spider hornets cant sting them and drag them away(big hornets...nasty buggers).

I thought of this thread because of the proposed Badger cull you lot want to have, what a daft idea and the science isn't proven yet that they are responsible for that disease(bovine TB or something?) and I don't like killing things at all unless it's for eating then I don't have a problem with it, as long as it's done humanely

>> So I'll be out later on fishing him out and moving him on. I'm too far from Sydney to send him to the antivenom wallahs anyway <<

So, why don't you slam him into a plastc jar full of water and next day him?