spiders

We've got spiders. Lots of spiders. Lots of other insects and greeblies too (and lots of birds that feed on them), but Xan is kinda freaked out by the population of spiders in our yard, and occasionally in our house. The nooks and crannies outside of the house quickly get filled with webs, and de-webbing the car is standard procedure before driving somewhere.

One day she told me that she opened the bedroom window and got scared by a very large and very fast spider. She said its body was the size of an almond. Uh huh, ya ya, sure sure, no exaggeration there at all, i'm sure. She's a big fraidycat. So i opened the window to see if the big bad scary spider was still around, and AGHH!! Holy Crap! THIS THING WAS THE SIZE OF A WALNUT!! And OMFG was it fast! It freaked me right out! Fortunately it went back out the window and dropped to the ground. Given its size, it probably landed with a thud.

Yesterday we had people over for games, and Xan called me into the kitchen. On the floor near the sink was a *huge* fast spider. Not sure if it was the same kind, but maybe. The body was the size of an almond (segmented like a wasp), and its leg span was about 8 cm (3 inches). I trapped it under a translucent cover, and slid some paper and a cutting board underneath. One guest urged me to kill it, but why would i want to kill such an awesome creature? I walked to the grassy field across the street and let it go, sprinting back to the house before it could chase me down. :)

Today i looked it up. There are thousands of varieties of spiders, and looking at the Wikipedia article on spider taxonomy made it clear that this wasn't going to be an easy task. So i took a different tact, googling "big fast spider", and in one of those "gotta love the internet" moments, the top hit was a youtube video of our spider:

Spider ... it's Big it's fast.. but what is it???

Now, youtube comments are generally among the most utterly retarded tripe on the intertubes, but lo and behold, some non-idiots answered the question, leading me to:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_house_spider

This is the fastest "true" spider in the world, clocking speeds of over half a meter per second (20 inches/sec). With it's sleek body, this truly is the Lamborgini of spiders. I was glad to read that they are entirely harmless to humans, so i can sleep a little easier.