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Hey hey!

Alright, so I'm still alive and still in Australia. I guess you can say that Ash and I have been living it up here, which would explain the lack of blogs...or you can just blame my sheer laziness. Either way, the drought is over.

A couple of days ago, I was innocently minding my own business and talking to mum & pop on the phone when this gruesome intruder decided to barge into my room. It was this enormous spider! Ashleigh was still sleeping, so shrieking was out of the question. There was a yelp though. I couldn’t let it out of my sight or else I would never have peace of mind.

Thus began a 2-hour Mexican standoff with Arnold, which was our nickname for it. You’ll understand later.

Armed with a flashlight and a flip-flop, I successfully persuaded him to leave my room and go into the living room. From there, I grabbed a broom and a bucket. You see, Australia has definitely changed me. If I were in Canada, I would have bludgeoned the poor guy to death. But seeing that I was in a country that prides itself in loving furry little animals and ridiculously creepy bugs, I thought I’d spare the guy. All I wanted to do was shoo it out the door. But of course, it wouldn’t cooperate.

This was when Ash woke up and we tag-teamed it. She held the broom while I grabbed a mop. You guys may be thinking that this was a pretty drastic measure for a little bug. Hell no! This spider was at least the size of two toonies. It may sound small but think about it. I could see his features. That’s too big.

Look at him. This photo was not digitally enhanced in any way. He has a freaking laser eye!!! It was glowing. The more it glowed, the more we screamed. He reminded me of the Terminator, which explains the name Arnold.

To make a long story short, Ashleigh ended up locking me out of the apartment with the spider outside our door. I swear it tried to crawl back into our place at least five times. I was armed with only a kitchen cleaner spray, so before it could crawl back in, I sprayed it. Okay, so clearly this cleaner was an industrial strength cleaner because I missed but a little of it hit Arnold and one of his legs just fell off! I didn’t hit him, it just fell off. If he wasn’t so hideous and frightening, I’d actually feel sorry for the guy. No, we did feel bad. Poor little bugger. He just admitted defeat and crawled away.

Canadians: 1, Spiders: 0

But Arnold was pretty small compared to another spider we saw at our friend’s house. It was at least the size of a grown woman’s hand. Of course, being Canadian girls who have only seen tiny little daddy-long-legs, we froze when we saw it. Our friends were like, “Oh, it’s only a Huntsman. They are not venomous.”

Uh-huh. Yes, they are probably not venomous, but from what I can ascertain from it’s name, it can hunt us and kill us. Our forefathers didn’t give it that name for no reason. So the reactions of our friends should have consisted of less composure and more screaming.

Oh, and another possum crawled onto our balcony the other night. It was much smaller than Charles Edwards the 3rd. We believe it was his son, Charlie Xavier the 4th. I guess we can’t help it. Australian wildlife just gravitate towards us. It’s alright though, as long as we have our industrial strength kitchen cleaner.

Jess