The Australian Reptile Park in NSW‘s Central Coast has come to us with the most blessedly fucked Christmas news: there’s a lot of Funnel-Web spiders out there for this time of year. Good. Great. Exactly what I wanted to hear.
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The reptile park is the only place in Australia that milks the venom from the bitey-bits of funnel-web spiders to make antivenom, so they’ve alway encouraged folks who find an eight-legged mate in the yard to safely capture it (fuck no) and bring it in (also fuck no).
This year? Well my good bitch, they’ve been bloody inundated with the buggers – so much so that the spider team have had to issue a statement reminding folks on what to do when they come across a leggy boi.
Oh and not only is this the biggest influx of spideys that the reptile park have seen in years, THEY ARE ALSO THE BIGGEST.
All spiders handed in are reaching a leg span of over 6cms each, with the largest reaching a humungous 10cms! Along with this, the thickness of each leg sits at 3mm each, which is extremely rare.
Oh GOOD. Just G R E A T. I will never sleep again.
Truly, in writing this yarn, a fly landed on my arm and I flipped out, thinking that a spider had just waltzed across my skin. Fuck this all to heck.
Tim Faulkner from the reptile park has said that the recent storms and warmer weather has been the perfect conditions for the funnel webs, and said best way to capture one without getting bitten is to trap it in a jar or container.
If you are an adult and feel safe to do so, please catch the funnel webs using a big glass jar and keeping your hands away from the spider, coax the spider into the jar and bring it to us or one of our drop-off points – you will help us save lives.
So if you come across a thicc eight-legged nope this summer, don’t kill it – just do what I do and scream/cry/dry heave and get your housemate/parent/partner to catch the damn thing.
