The spider that came in from the cold

[angharad_gam]

 Last night I was sitting in bed and noticed a large spider scuttling across the floor. It was not a redback or other notably dangerous variety, nor a more standard house spider like a daddy longlegs or a huntsman, just a generic looking large hairy spider. Usually we are pretty relaxed about spiders in the house, although we tend to err on the side of 'if it's likely to bite a small person it has to go' (even though these days the smallest person in the house is actually me). When I started to get up it went under the bed. So I went and fetched Andy. I am not bothered much by spiders as a general rule, but I do not like things crawling on me. 

Andy fished the spider out and released it into the front garden. 
"Funny," he said. "That looks exactly like the spider I removed from the kids' bathroom last week."

An hour later he came back to inform me that the spider (the exact same spider) was now in the kitchen. This spider really really wants to be inside, it seems. This time it got put out the back where the doors have closer seals around the edges. 

Also this morning Andy woke up and told me he'd been having a dream about Peter Dutton mowing our lawn.

The weather has been extremely peculiar lately. The last few days have been really sticky and humid. Last week we managed to have a 24 hour period in which it went from being 43°C and 11% humidity to raining 25mm in about 20 mins. That might not seem like a lot, but Adelaide doesn't typically get a lot of rain at once, and our soils and drainage infrastructure tend to get a bit overwhelmed if we do. Typically 30mm in a day will cause light flooding in some areas. Needless to say that much in such a short period of time was slightly terrifying. All the gutters on the house overflowed (in some places there were sheets of water pouring off the roof), and the shed (which is recessed into the ground for reasons that were probably sensible when it was built) filled up with a couple of inches of water. 

This morning I have been reading through old blog posts from when the kids were small and thinking 'how are we all still alive?'

Comments

[dirtygreatknife]

I had a bloody huge redback out in the front porch last evening. I was out to put a new put next to the Money Plant and there the bugger was, calm as you please.

Naturally, I was not calm as you please, and there was shrieking and some Mortein involved in my reaction.

[angharad_gam]

Redbacks are usually insta-squish around here. Some of them can be freaking enormous.

I had a friend once who had a nest of them right over her front door. No matter what she did she could never seem to get rid of them all.

[dirtygreatknife]

I know! I don't want a sting monster from the dawn of time to bite me.

YIKES. OMG, I would move.

[reverancepavane]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfWS8lJ7U5k

[angharad_gam]

Yeah, I get that. I don't have to like it though. If I wanted humid weather I would move to Queensland.

[davidcook]

I've evicted a Surprise!Huntsman from the house a couple of times, pretty sure this particular 7-legged specimen is a repeat visitor. Also surprised the cats haven't caught up with it yet :)

(we're on a sloping block, so there's a storage/workshop area at the back corner of the house. Unfortunately, floor level in there is about 10cm below ground level, so if we get enough rain in a short period, it gets flooded. It happened often enough that I bought a pump and put in a drainage pit thingy for it, it can clear out the water in 10 minutes or so. (there was one time when even that wouldn't have helped, when most of the back yard was 30cm deep in water - no point in pumping, there was nowhere to put the water that wasn't already water :) ) )

[angharad_gam]

We are on the top of a hill but with the house set slightly lower than street level, so the water accumulates a bit, but seems to drain away fairly rapidly, which is comforting. The worst thing for heavy rain is that someone added a pergola roof to the courtyard some time after the house was built, and in doing so covered over the gutters. They have since gotten clogged up with gunk, but are inaccessible, so we can't clean them out. It therefore doesn't take a very heavy downpour for the gutters to overflow all around the house.

[dotcom1144.wordpress.com]

There's weird rain everywhere. I've lived in this house for more than 5 years, this is the first year it has ever rained at night that I can remember. We've always been the hot humid day, 4pm storm and then clear all night but not anymore.