It's a Rat! It's a Crab! It's a...BIG, HAIRY SPIDER!

While watching a cartoon with the kids this morning, I saw what I thought was a small rat run past the door of the room we were in. Lizards, millipedes, and various other critters are known to live in our house, some more welcome than others. But we have yet to see a rat inside here, and I investigated.

The thing was nestled between the hinge side of the door and the frame, on the floor. It appeared to be a medium-sized crab, and I hopped out of the way as it scuttled around to the other side of the door.

Now it was in better light, and I saw it was not a crab. I tried to study it without alarming it. Not a crab...wide oblong body with a white disc underneath...counting legs...YESSIREEBOY that's a spider!

Mom will be proud to hear that I did try to catch it in a jar and put it outside unharmed. I really did. But even the big empty pickle jar in the pantry was going to cut Mrs. Spider's legs off if I tried to trap it outright. Mama taught me to do no unnecessary harm to creatures big or small. So I tried trapping it in a large plastic food storage container.

Mrs. Spider was way, way too fast for me. Two clumsy feet are no match for eight long legs. She was looking pretty creepy with that white thing on her belly. Which I suspected was a lot of baby spiders waiting to infiltrate my house. I really didn't want to kill all of them. Spiders eat bugs! They are good!

So I got the broom and tried sweeping her toward the door. But our broom has pretty soft bristles, and I was just irritating her and she started running all over the place, and the kids were getting curious at this point.

I am not proud to say my next decision was based somewhat on irrational fear. Retrieving the Hit poison spray, I found Mrs. Spider, and, apologizing, sprayed her down.

She immediately ran into the bathroom and disappeared.

Apparently, I just irritated her. Great.

We needed to leave, so I checked the bathroom, no spider...I decided to try and track her down when we returned.

An hour later, we were home and I decided to use my camera to look behind the pedestal sink rather than stick my head underneath it.

Not there.

No spider. I was pretty sure I Hit her (haha) and kept looking...sure enough, she had crawled out from wherever she was and was looking pretty dead.

If you know me, you know that spiders, snakes and other creepy-crawlies usually don't bother me. In fact, I find them more interesting than frightening. This one was definitely interesting to me. Big, round body and hairy, segmented legs.

She had cool markings on her posterior to resemble a larger animal:

And this one was breaking my heart, with her membranes all twisted out in the throes of a poisoned death. She was someone's mama!

She was this someone's mama. I stopped counting at 40 as I cleaned them up.

I'm not sure what it is about hairy spiders that makes me dislike them more than their sleeker cousins, but this girl had some serious bristle going on:

Henry supervised the collection of the spider, egg sac and babies into the pickle jar, and the kids have been studying it all day. We measured the leg segments and body, and at it's widest, it measures just under four and a half inches. Not bad for the day's catch.