You never know when a giant spider is going to leap out of your ring binder and crawl over your desk. Especially if you’re in Australia.
Debbie Ellwood, from central Queensland, experienced exactly that while working at her office on September 18.
“I pulled out my ring binder creditors folder (was that a sign?) and it jumped out and ran across my forearm and hand and then hid behind my stapler,” Ellwood told Newsweek.
Tina Bates/Debbie Ellwood/Facebook
“My heart was beating fast, and I have never really been scared of spiders however it was not familiar. We don’t normally see spiders that big around central Queensland,” she said.
Ellwood did not want to hurt the gigantic arachnid, but she needed to get it out of her office, fast. “I thought about lots of different ways,” she said. “I even had some visuals of it running up my arm.”
Slowly, Ellwood removed the clutter on her desk and placed a large colander over the creepy crawly. “I slid some laminated calendar under and then placed on my laptop for stability and took it outside,” Ellwood said. “She was quite placid. Glad I never hurt her now, but it wasn’t easy to be brave.”
Ellwood sent photos of the enormous spider to her family to see if anyone could identify it. Stumped, her niece, Tina Bates, shared the photos to the Facebook group Australian Spider Identification.
Jacinta Leicht, a top contributor in the group and spider enthusiast, identified it as a heavily pregnant jungle huntsman. Group expert Johan Kruger agreed, formally identifying her as a female member of the Sparassidae spider family.
Australian huntsman spiders are a group of large, long-legged arachnids that can be found throughout most of the continent. According to the Australian Museum, 94 different species of Australian huntsman have been identified, with some reaching leg spans of up to 6 inches.
Huntsmen are mostly found living under loose tree bark, wall crevices and under rocks and logs. However, they are also notorious for finding their way into cars and people’s houses.
Spiders lay their eggs in an egg sac outside of their bodies, but while the female holds the eggs in her body she is described as being “gravid.” Gravid is the spider equivalent of being pregnant and it means heavy with fertilized eggs.
Bates’s Facebook post has received hundreds of likes and comments, with many referencing her gravid abdomen.
“I completely relate to the picture of mama tryna squeeze into the gap and her booty saying nope,” commented one user.
“Thank you for relocating her safely. Poor mamma,” said another.
