A Tale Of Tarantula Terror

I want to move out of Mackay and the Whitsundays. Yep, you read that right. I don’t want to live here anymore – in fact, if I’m completely honest with you I don’t want to live in Australia anymore.

Why, you may or may not be asking? It couldn’t be the incredible reef on our doorstep, it couldn’t be the spectacular hiking trails or the secluded waterholes and it definitely couldn’t be the amazing venues to dine and drink with your nearest and dearest… so, what in the bloody hell made this proud local decided “that’s enough, I’m out”?

Well, you can blame one woman. Her name is Trudy and she (not-so) innocently put a post in the Whitsunday Chat on Facebook asking for people to help her ID a spider she found on her property that I can only describe as ‘the bringer of death” or at least a heart attack, as I was scrolling over the long weekend. It was then that I learned that Queensland has spiders that look like the deadly Eastern Funnel Web but they call it a Queensland Tarantula.

Thanks to one of the commenters Tenielle I also learned that they are “out because the rain floods their burrows and they don’t want to drown so they go walkabout at night”.

If you ask me, they can walkabout their way into a can of bug spray but alas I know they do their bit for the environment so, instead of going into battle with an insect I’ll never win against, I’ve come to the conclusion I need to leave. I don’t know when it will be but my guess is the first time I see one of them at my place.
I’ve only just come to terms with the idea there’s Huntsman living in my garage and now this, I don’t know how much more of this arachnophobia I can take!

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