So last night I got back to doing productive things around the house after work. I drug out the pressure cleaner and blasted off the cement pad by the front door and windows. After that I pulled the mums that my mom had in pots and planted them into our one landscaped area that is full of mums. Then I transplanted another plant my mom had that sort of looks like a lily into one of the pots a mum was in and then put it on the lanai at the spot vacated by the small tree we planted where the areca used to be. Confused? Well anyway it was a good little after work project.
I was tired and had showered and
was already laying in bed by the time I heard the garage door open when Ali got back from ballet. I was waiting for the little chirp from the alarm system when she walked through the door. It never chirped. Instead the phone starts to ring. As I answer it I see it is Ali’s cell phone and I start walking towards the door and start to turn the knob. Ali screams, “DON’T OPEN IT!!!!” WTF?? Ali says there is a HUGE spider on the door. She told me (on her cell phone)to open the front door so she could come in that way instead. I obliged and opened the front door for her and immediately walked into the garage to see what freaked her out so badly. It was a wolf spider, a BIG wolf spider, almost as big as my hand.
Now the majority of people would probably look for the closest blunt object to use to smash the thing which would be no easy task, wolf spiders are very fast and like to jump. I, on the other hand was out there with my little bug catching device although I quickly realized it was far too small to capture this sucker. So I looked around the garage for another containment device. I wound up dumping a clear plastic container for tapcon screws. So now it was time to try to snag this beast.
As I mentioned, wolf spiders are very fast. Each time I would try to pin him down he would shoot out of the way. I had to pull everything away from the walls to minimize his places to hide. After a good 5 minutes of hide and seek I finally got him down onto the floor and was able to flip the lid on the container and snag him. I proudly brought my prize inside to show Ali. Just call me Duf the Spider Hunter. We took a few pics of it to validate my achievement. Even with it being trapped inside the container it freaked Ali out. They are scary looking spiders. After the photo session was done I walked my little unwelcome guest down to one of the clumps of palm trees and let him loose.
You can see the other pics we took of the spider as well as two pics of fat Buttons lounging on the carpet here.
Like everyone else I showed the picture to, he was freaked out by the size of this thing. Evidently he went so far as to mention the spider on the show as well as the brief story of it’s capture, including both my and Ali’s name. My brother just happened to have Y-102 on and heard the mention. I never would have thought my spider capture story would have been broadcast over most of southeastern PA, funny stuff.