new friend

living, HOW IS HE GETTING IN, and why is THAT the spot he wants to be innnn, weeping gnashing etc

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CW SPIDERS press J right now if you do not like spiders, godspeed

So when I was in the yurt I always had spiders in there, it was unavoidable. The first season they were wolf spiders and I managed to make some peace with that but the little fuckers would bruise me when they bit me and it was not great. The second season I was in a shadier spot, less attractive to the wolfies, and I wound up with a lovely barn spider orb weaver type that I named Dolores, who lived in my light fixture and spun beautiful elaborate webs that she would redo every morning in the gray light before sunrise.

The cabin is much more… indoors than the yurt was, so I haven’t had a lot of visitors. There was a funnel web spider in the south window for much of last summer, and she tried to join me in the blanket fort as it got cold, but I moved her along and she stayed moved.

But this year there hasn’t been much of anybody. Until two nights ago, when I ascended the ladder to my sleeping loft and there, sitting on my beige thrift store sheets, was the most massive arachnid I’ve ever seen in the wild in this climate.

I caught him in a candleholder and carried him down the stairs (have i shared a photo of my stairs? they’re a bit laddery but much easier to use than a ladder and they do not wobble even a little!) and flung him out the door, shivering with horror. I am cautiously sort of okay with spiders, but Not Really.

And then last night I went up the stairs again and there he was, waiting, in almost the same spot– on my little sheepskin rug, directly next to the bed.

I took a photo this time, which I shall include under a cut so you can see what i’m dealing with. I’m not sure of his species! He’s 100% not a wolf, and I don’t think he’s a funnel web spider; he’s also not behaving like one. He’s just sitting in wait sprawled out in an open spot, IDK why. No webs anywhere. He looks more like the fishing spiders that live on the docks in Adirondack lakes, but what he’d be doing indoors on a second storey I don’t know.

Anyway. I got him into the same candleholder, and carried him down and flung him out the more distant door, but if he’s there again tonight I have a jar with a screw lid and I’m going to put him into that and leave him there all night and then take him somewhere farther away in the morning. I cannot have this guy as a pet, he is Too Large and too fond of my bed. The truce I reached with the wolf spiders was “no spiders in the bed” and he doesn’t seem willing to abide by that so NOPE.

cut: for really real a lot of spider

Candle lighter for scale but it’s not doing the best job. In his resting posture, splayed out, he is most of the size of my palm. NEW THENK YEW.

at liberty, showing leg conformation better but not at all conveying scale:

and a bonus glamor shot of him giving me a furious death-stare as i have him captive:

[image descriptions: three photos of a giant fucking spider, two in a glass candleholder and one sprawled out on a sheepskin rug seductively. Eight legs, two pedipalps, legs pretty evenly distributed and fairly thick, coloration brown with speckles/banding but no bold markings, fairly narrow abdomen; i don’t know what species this is at all!] (Your picture was not posted)