rain spider
Update –> Well last night it finally rained in Pretoria, after months of no rain. The Rain Spider lived up to its reputation of signalling the coming rains by wandering into homes. We found this one yesterday morning (first of the season) . It was quite docile and it was releatively easy to take outside compared to others. </update>
A photo of a Rain Spider that we caught in our house a while ago. It was probably the biggest spider I have ever seen, staying next to a nature reserve it is not uncommon to find some pretty big Baboon or Wolf Spiders around. This thing dwarfed them all.
Catching it and taking it outside was quite the ordeal;
- They are really aggressive as can be seen in the photo. No trying to run away, these things come right at you.
- They are really fast… it almost got to my hand a few times. I took it out in a 5l ice cream container but it tends to not sit still as other spiders usually do.
- Have a look at the fangs…
- It freaken jumps at you.
But luckily I eventually got it outside and safely released in a far corner of the garden, where it now feeds on neighbourhood cats. And who says spiders are not usefull? Damn noisy parrot eating cats.
See here for a bigger version of the above photo.
