Here’s looking (& looking, & looking) at you, kid

The shriek from downstairs could mean only one of two things. Either I had accidentally mixed the coloureds with the whites (again!) or there was a spider nearby. The subsequent calls for help suggested the latter. And there it was. A 173-centimetre person standing on a chair bailed up by an equally frightened one-centimetre spider.

The spider was a Wolf Spider (Family Lycosidae). Wolf Spiders live in most places on the globe, especially in our downstairs studio. They are agile hunters with excellent eyesight. In fact they have eight eyes in three rows –four small eyes, above which sit two larger eyes with two medium-sized eyes above that (see image). At night Wolf Spiders are easy to locate with a torch. The ‘eye-shine’ (light reflected back from the eyes) on some nights makes our driveway look as if it is scattered with diamonds.

Because I have been threatened with physical violence if I publish a spider photo on this blog by several members of the community I have discreetly embedded the image in a video. If you wish to view a face only a mother (or an optometrist) could love, click on the video below.

At the time of going to press, another of our eight legged, hairy brethren turned up at the Three Sisters. It looked like a Victorian Funnel-web Spider (Hadronyche modesta), a far less poisonous relative of the Sydney Funnel-web Spider. It is lucky that it did not turn up in our studio. There would not have been an intact pane of glass in the valley. Its image has been added to the video clip (which may take a few moments to load).