Spiders

Chill about the spiders. Probably.

Yes, there are spiders. And some fraction of them are dangerous. However, most are basically irrelevant and definitely not a reason to avoid moving here.

Our house

When we arrived in our Northern Beaches rental (that is fairly close to bush areas), we moved into a house with a garden that had 18 months of neglect. There were spiders everywhere (outside), and branches reaching out towards my bedroom to deliver spiders. I counted about 6 types in the first 30 minutes. Heebie-jeebies does not cover my initial alarm.

I’m also somewhat of an arachnophobe. My wife and I have a long-standing arrangement: she handles live things, I handle dead things. My policy is that she needs to deal with it or I move it into my portfolio and then dispose of it.

Right. Back to Australia. We moved into the jungle-spider house. I hadn’t actually seen any spiders inside, but I was going to stay alive. My general approach was to never walk around at night without a torch. Lift the toilet seat. Step on my shoes repeatedly to make sure it was all dead before I put the shoe on. I’d tuck myself into bed, reducing the places that a spider could bite me. And I bought long rubber boots for garden work. And sprays.

Webs

Then I had a chat with a neighbour. His best piece of advice was that a spider that has a web you can walk through is not likely to be really dangerous. The ones you want to be cautious of are the ground-dwellers. (Great. That’s where I live, but we move on.) The ones that are hiding underneath a rock or leaves, in a log or furrow of a tree, or inside a shoe you leave outside - those you might want to avoid. The big ones with webs all over - they’re fine, just mostly let them be and adjust the webs if they’re in the way. I can see a few from my office and I’m still alive.

Funnel webs

This guy is absolutely the real deal when it comes to terryfing spiders. Has killed humans. Can survive in water for up to 30 hours. Has crazy scary fangs that can bite through your fingernails or a soft shoe. It’s basically the Chuck Norris of spiders.

He’s really scary, but he’s like a shark - impactful but rare. I’ve been here a year and only seen them in zoos. They’re rarely seen and even more rarely bite humans.

Funnel-webs live in a hole in the ground, surrounded by a funnel-like web. The ones sitting in funnels aren’t as dangerous as the ones that are roaming around. Those are more likely to be males looking for females during breeding season (late October to early February). They get picked off by other animals as they’re roaming around so their poison has developed as a defence. For some reason (yay us) humans are also affected by this venom.

Their more powerful venom also means they’re more valuable, because it’s used to create antivenom. The Australian Reptile Park’s antivenom program has run since 1981, and no deaths have occurred since. There are only 30-40 bites a year, so you’re 100 times more likely to die of diabetes than you are of being bitter by a funnel web. Go get some exercise.

Redback spider

This spider is far more likely to be one you interact with, and there are an estimated 2000-10000 bites a year, so many times more than the funnel web. However, the redback is basically a black widow spider and you’ve likely seen many of those in South Africa. Similar venom profile, similar type spider, you survived SA. In fact, I’ve never seen one in Sydney and I saw many in Johannesburg. Only one person has died of a redback bite in the last 70 years.

Huntsman

The huntsman looks really scary but is absolutely not a risk, unless you consider deaths by fear-induced heart attacks a big spider risk. They don’t chase you, they just want to hide in a shadow. They also eat other spiders, which is a marvellous feature. They’re basically the same as rain spiders in SA.

Fly screens

The best line of defence is a fly screen. We all know what they’re really for - they’re spider screens.

This is a widely-used solution and there’s a section for fly screen materials at Bunnings. It’s not that hard to build a screen, and I’m sure there will be willing tradie types to do it for you at a price. Once you have these up, you can leave a window open night and day, and no spiders get in. I’ve fixed a couple screens in the house and added two more for better through-flow, and they’re really great.

Good practices

It’s supposedly a good idea to shake towels and shoes out before putting them on, and I was religious about this in the first few months. I still stand on my shoes most times. However, because we have the fly screens I think we’re relatively well protected and I’ve seen very few spiders inside. When we move to a more open house I’ll be more sure to shake everything out!

Do not leave shoes outside, especially overnight, especially in Summer. That’s just asking for a nice big funnel-web to hide in the marvellous hole you’ve made. If you happen to leave it out, just fill it up with petrol, set it on fire and shoot it into the sea. Or shake it out, I guess that probably works too.

Don’t scratch around in the leaves. Use gloves, and even better use tools. We learned to use tools thousands of years ago, you don’t need to dig with your hands any more.