Deja Vu!

So a few weeks ago, we posted a horrible story about a mother spider and her babies whose life ended tragically in our hallway. Today, I have another story to tell you about a mother spider and her babies whose life (nearly) ended tragically in our garage!

Now, last time we told you about a "huge" spider...I am telling you, if that was huge, this one was larger than life!! I just stared at the thing for about 10 minutes saying "oh my gosh, oh my gosh" over and over again. It was not comprehensible to me that a creature THAT BIG could exist.

So, being a picture-taking freak, I HAD to grab the camera and document this momentous event...no way was anyone going to believe me about the enormity of this thing if I did not have photographic proof! I ran inside the house and grabbed the camera (earlier plans of a library expedition forgotten), then came darting outside to take a picture. I snapped one and looked at it. It did NOTHING to show the size of the beast. So what would any perfectly weird girl do in a situation like this? Catch it, of course! At least this way I could show Ben and he could back me up when we described this monster at the next dinner party.

I poked it with a (very long) stick to prod him out of the corner of the garage. Turns out, HE is a SHE and she has babies who dart every which way when I poke her. Right then, visions of an earlier massacre clouded my vision and I was taken back to the better days of finding just extremely large mother spiders with baby hitchhikers as opposed to MASSIVE ones. As I stomp on the babies, my determination to catch this thing grows stronger! I MUST view it under the magnifying glass of Jaimason's bug catcher to look at the mini-monsters riding on the back.

Many minutes, and much profuse sweating later, I emerge from the garage victorious with the "Mother of All Spiders" (haha) caught in the bug-catcher. This is her:

Again, let me remind you that these pictures do NOTHING to show the size of this She-Monster.

After gawking at her for several hours, I took her outside and chucked her into the golf-course as far as I could. Killing her with a shoe would have been nearly impossible and FAR TOO MESSY. Even from a distance, I saw her hit the ground and her children go flying in all directions. She was nearly dead when I let her go. Turns out, when some spiders give birth, they die. Who knew?