On our return journey in the early evening, I was driving at about 110kph and thought I’d run over a small bird or something. There were no cars around so I backed up, careful not to run over what ever it was that had passed underneath us. It was a giant spider! We parked the car and had a look. Not too close though, it was a big hairy tarantula. It was stationary in the road, we just looked at it, and it reared up a little with its front two legs and we stepped back just in case. Then a 4x4 appeared on the horizon and we wondered if it was going to be squashed.....the 4x4 passed within inches but missed it, but the wind from it passing causing the spider to roll over a couple of times though, whereupon it decided to head for the safety of the road-side. Thinking quickly, I felt we needed to record the size of the spider with a suitable reference: "Quick, Jules, put your hand on the ground right next to it so that I can take a photo and we’ll have a reference to its size!” (Well I'm taking the photo, so I can't very well do it, can I!) I can’t print the response, suffice to say that instead I put a training shoe on the side of the road in the tarantula's path. Not sure what we’d have done if she had decided to nestle inside the shoe, (not mine, thankfully) but she passed by the side.
We remembered seeing one of these at London Zoo, they are apparently harmless, and actually quite fragile, but I wasn’t about to pick it up in case it was a different variety that was poisonous. Plus it was big and hairy and I wouldn’t pick it up anyway.
That’s undoubtedly the biggest spider we’ve seen in our 3 months or so here. We wouldn’t be disappointed if we didn’t see any larger ones now, thank you very much.
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