Me, the Hunted

I'd just like to start out saying that I really hate spiders. Especially now that I'm in Australia and they supposedly have some of the most deadliest ones just crawling around. Just looking at a picture of one makes me feel very strange inside.

On Sunday night I was in my room trying to get through 30 pages of reading about translation theory that I had all week to do, but left it to the last minute because "I didn't think it'd be THAT many pages". So I'm reading and out of the corner of my eye I see some dark fur blur rapidly crawling up the side of my wardrobe. I looked at it just 2 seconds and started to freak out because there was a tarantula in my room. In MY room! I slyly went over the phone that was right in across from the spider and called William and told to "Bill!!!! There's a giant spider on my wall! Come!" And he took forever to come. Or it seemed like it. So by the time he gets to my room the spider is just about above the doorway and I didn't want to go out and William didn't come it. He took at look at it and comfirmed that "its a pretty big spider". We kind of just stood around for a bit, well I was squirming, trying to decide what to do with. William decided a styrophone cup would do the trick. A girl walked by in the hall and said that we should call security because she has a spider in her room last week and there's no way of telling wether its poisonous or not. So I call security and tell them, "Hello?! I'm in Howitt Hall on the 12th floor and there is a GIANT spider in my room and I don't know what to do!" So the guy on the other end says (mockingly), "There's a giant spider in your room and its not a pet?" Of course not. He tells me to go to the Ops office (resident operations office) and get some bug spray and spray it. And if it didn't work I should call him back and he'd "walk me through it".

William goes and get it because I can't leave the room, for fear the spider will jump on my head and attack me. He comes back with 2 cans of raid and by that time, the spider is on the other side of my room and I'm sitting on top of my desk. We move my bags and blanket off of the bed and my chair in case the spider jumps and Raid has to be sprayed in my stuff. So he climbs on my bed and I take a picture of him and the raid can and then he starts spraying. I start jumping around in the hallway so the spider doesn't get my feet and the spider falls on to the floor and goes under my bed. I come into the room and somewhat help pull my suitcases from under the bed and I see the spider crawling around and William sprays it to death. All over my new suitcase. The spider didn't want to die so he sprayed some more and then it was dead and shriveled no longer looked like a tarantula.

According to the Queensland Museum (the state in northeastern australia and home to the great barrier reef), these giant spiders "are famed as being the hairy so-called 'tarantulas' on house walls that terrify people by scuttling out from behind curtains". The thing sure terrified me. Their habitats incldue houses, forested areas, gardens, rainforest and my room.