Arrival

One of the first things my boss/housemate said to me as I arrived in my new home was 'you have to watch out for these spiders'. As an arachnophobe of long standing I felt the little hairs on the back of my neck start to stand up. This isn't right. One of the reasons for coming to New Zealand, apart from the weather (of which there's lots) is that, like the uk, they don't have any poisonous creatures. Unfortunately the white-tailed spider is an unwanted import from Oz (good to know the uk isn't the only place that suffers from unwanted Oz imports) and apparently if you get bitten by one your limb falls off or something equally horrendous. My temporary home was a wooden clapboard house nestled on a hill in the middle of a mix of bushes and trees and loved by spiders. My first night, tired as I was, wasn't an easy one. I'd evicted three of the blighters before I even began to feel comfortable but over the coming weeks became pretty adept at capturing and 'setting free' numerous brown, long-legged hairy things, fluttery things and just plain big ugly things (that's wild-life not the neighbours I hasten to add). The next day I got out the hoover and sucked up anything that wasn't nailed down and evicted the trap-door spider (yes you heard correct) which was living in a rolled up blind in the corner. I believe it's much happier living in it's dingy corner of the garage than it ever could have been in my bedroom. At least I'm much happier!