After yelling at Ellie to get up on the stairs by the door and not to move, I decided that this creature MUST die. So I went over to the cabinet where we keep all of the poisonous chemicals with Mackenzie in tow, and looked for some sort of radioactive nuclear bug killing spray. None to be found. I grabbed the next best thing, wasp and hornet spray of course. I walked back over to where our new pet was sitting, and from about 20 feet away shot it with the spray. This did nothing, and I swear he stood up on his hind legs, pointed, and laughed at me, if not to say, "You crazy woman! That will not work on me!". He then turned and scurried out ouf site.
Out of site, out of mind (not really) I ran in the house as fast as I could with Mackenzie and Ellie. Tom arrived home a couple of minutes later, and asked me why I was freaking out. I explained that there was a spider in the garage, and he had to go find it. He looked at me like I was insane, and responded with, "It's only a spider! Was it a black widow?" My response was No, but this thing was huge! It had girth! GO GET IT NOW!!!!
So, Tom put on his gardening gloves, and proceeded to the garage. Where he successfully removed every item from the corner of the garage, and found NOTHING! He was beginning to think I was crazy, until he heard it move. Yes, you read that right, he heard it moving. As he looked over, he saw it, and thought it was a plastic play spider toy, until it moved.
After much a do, a trash can, a baby food jar, and a pair of kitchen tongs, the monster had been captured!!! Yea! Now to determine exactly WHAT this thing was. This picture really doesn't do the size of this spider justice. When he was alive and standing up, he stood about 2-3 inches off the ground, and the circumference around his legs was equal to a pop can. Not exactly a small spider, and not one that we have seen around these parts before.
So Tom, being the engineer that he is, examined our specimen quite closely, using a flashlight and shaking the jar around. With the help of google, wikipedia, and a couple of web sites about Spiders in our area, this is a Wolf Spider. Wolf Spiders have very unique eye configurations that matched this guy. Mystery solved! Actually, this would be considered a large Wolf Spider due to its size.
This thing gave us the heebeegeebee's for most of the night. But we couldn't stop looking at it. Not surprisingly, the wasp spray did not kill him. It did start to eat little holes in his exo-skeleton though (that we can see). After being enclosed in the baby food jar for about 90 minutes, he finally stopped moving. Gross.
Apparently, Wolf Spiders are quite common in our area, and mostly harmless. They will bite if provoked, but these things are NASTY looking.
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