Very large hairy spider on my pillow!

Before we set out on our gap-year, I decided it was time to man up and deal with spiders.  I reasoned that it is not enough to let Jules deal with them in the knowledge that I ‘bravely’ handle all the wasps, as if it was some kind of acceptable quid pro quo.  Wasps don’t worry me, but large spiders do.  Nevertheless, before we left home, there was a medium sized spider scuttling across the stone floor at Keith and Jenny’s house, and I decided to steel myself and pick him up and put him outside the house, much to the surprise of my father in law, who was unused to seeing such feats, from me at least.  

So when we explored our room at a little hotel in Nagarkot, just outside Kathmandu, this week, we saw a number of spiders in our room each night. Thankfully, they were sufficiently small to deal with, no more than two inches diameter, and flattish so suitable for picking up using the “card and cup” trick.  All except one.  A large one.  Very large.  Un-Britishly large.  Jules saw him first, just above the door, thankfully on the outside.  I glanced up when she mentioned it - even she was taken aback.  I just saw part of it disappear around the corner of one of the joists, and resolved immediately to not look up whenever I passed through the door.  It was like a unilateral pact.   I won’t bother you and you stay out there out of my way. I think I perfected the art of locking and unlocking the door by leaning over and reaching the lock from about 6 feet away. 

Then on our last night, just as we were putting the boys to bed, I was walking towards the boys bed at the other end of the room.  There was a power cut again, a daily occurrence as they use power load-sharing here.   We had a couple of candles flickering away and as I flicked the torch light cross the room, I caught sight of something black on the curtain above our bed.  I glanced over and saw this unfeasibly large spider, moving stealthily across the curtain in that creepy slow-motion way, like a determined tarantula. It was about the same size as the tarantula we’d seen in Argentina, but somehow in the dark light, it looked bigger and its blackness made it even more menacing. In fact at one point, with the shadows, I thought there were two of them together.  I called Jules over - calmly, I thought, although she later thought that the urgency in my voice suggested a possible serious injury.  There was no way we were sleeping with THAT running amok in our room.  We started thinking about how to turf it out, a cup would be no good, you;d need a small bucket. We decided to call the chap downstairs, as they told us they’d be happy to help. 

Of course, when he came back up, the spider was nowhere to be seen, having gone behind the curtain, and we couldn’t remember whether it was the left or right one.  The young chap looked behind both, even giving them a gentle shake, but the spider wasn’t there.  An uneasy silence descended, broken only by sound of our wind-up torch being vigourously re-energised. It began to look like we might be left with a decidedly unsatisfactory conclusion and the suggestion that “It’s probably gone now.”  Then Frankie called out excitedly “There, there, there!"   "Where?"  "Up there! Up there! Up there on the curtain rail”

Sure enough, the spider, accompanied by it’s even larger shadow, were crawling along the top of the rail and onto the wall.  As the waiter gingerly tried to grab it by one leg, it dropped onto my pillow (of all places) and attempted an escape. Thankfully the young man, with far more bravery than I would have mustered, grabbed the spider by the leg and headed out of the door. 
“Thank goodness that’s out.  Isn’t that the biggest spider you’ve ever seen Jules?” I remarked.  “No” she replied. The one outside our door is a lot bigger.  

Gives a whole new meaning to the expression “Spider at Large.”

We have a little video footage we took at the time. Perhaps wait till bedtime to look at it.....