Unwelcome mail.

The subject of this post is going to be familiar to you Aussies, and Meeks, look away now.

Some weeks ago I did a post about spiders (ok, I’ve done a few but this one in particular) that ended in a conversation with Bluey about Huntsmen spiders and their love of letter boxes. Yesterday I was unlucky enough to find a small one on my mail and I grabbed my camera to fulfil the promise of sharing the horror with her.

Yes, this is a small Huntsman, only about as big as the palm of my hand, there is no way I am getting this close with a camera to a big one. The photo in that case would be less pleasant, taken after I flipped the mail out of the box with a long stick and stomped on everything. Yeah, never post me anything breakable, ok….

Huntsmen are very long-legged spiders and that makes them look scarily big, but as you can see they are also very flat. I expect that this is some sort of special evolutionary trait to assist their unnoticed entry into houses via the collected mail.

C’mon, take me inside….

I admit that I did the girly “eeeek!” because he ran at me as soon as I lifted the mail so I immediately dropped the flyer straight back into the letterbox and slammed the lid.

I suddenly realized I had a blog post just sitting there if I pulled him back out so I went in, got my camera, took a breath and reached in.

Those awful beady eyes….. ick….

He politely stood still while I took a few shots then the Man drove up the driveway, temporarily distracting me. When I turned back the spider was gone.

Bugger. That just means he is still out there looking for a nice warm, dry house. I’m sure he will be back in residence in a few days but this time I have the photo so next time he may well just get the boot…