Anyway - they both get BIG and hairy, and I suspect they lift weights.

About this time of year we here in the northwest start seeing them crawling around our houses.  An article in the Seattle Times a few years back explained that the average home has about 200 of them crawling around.  It stated flatly the disturbing fact that 1/2 of 1% of them are actually Hobo Spiders...which means...let me see 200 x .005 = dang it!  There's one of those Hobo Spiders running around my house!!!!

At least I don't live in Marysville, WA because when it gave the statistic, the article casually mentioned in parenthesis "except for Marysville where it is 50%". 

HOLY CRAP!!!! 

God must really be pissed off at Marysville!

Historically , our cats have kept these things in check, but Hobbes died a year  ago (old age - not spider bite) and Calvin is old and arthritic now, sleeps 23 hours a day, and can barely be bothered to eat the food in his dish, let alone stalk and kill these beasties.  So it looks like we're on our own (actually we have a new cat - Miley, but she appears to be useless in this battle). Oh, and we have a yellow lab, Sami, who is stupid enough to eat cat poop or 24 hard boiled Easter eggs - glitter, stickers and all - but won't eat a spider - go figure!

And so this year I'm noticing more of these arachnoidal things creeping around (3 in 3 days now) - a disturbing trend to be sure. 

I should explain that me and these spiders go way back. I grew up in an old house in Seattle.  My room was in the basement next to the never-explored furnace room, the unfinished laundry room and the garage.  My windows were at ground level and didn't seal well and the room had an unused chimney and dark wood panneling.  In short, SPIDERTOPIA!

For the 6 or so years I lived in that room, these hairy arachnids were my constant companions.  I'd literally hunt them in my room EVERY night before bed. 

I'm not joking. EVERY. NIGHT. 

If I could go back in time I would find a way to trick my brother into moving downstairs instead of me.

But alas, the past is past and I have psychological scars.   Needless to say, there's no love lost between me and these things. And if karma applies here then I'm toast, because I killed a lot of these things as a kid. 

Ok, back to the present.  In my family I'm the designated spider catcher/dispatcher.  My 12-year-old daughter shows promise in this regard, but the torch has not been passed yet. 

But wait!  There's a twist!  The house rules state that I CAN NO LONGER KILL THESE THINGS!  I used to flush them (don't squash them unless you want a messy spot on your wall), but my kids are such softies they can't stand the thought of us killing a bug - even one as ugly and menacing as these hideous things. And so I  catch them and throw them out of the house (hmmm...maybe I'm paying off that karmic debt, but seriously, if it were up to me I'd kill them still, so maybe not). 

Anyway, I've always wondered how and what these things eat to get so freakin' big and tonight I think I figured it out.  When I came home from the gym I found a HUGE Wolf Spider outside our front door, sneaking up on a HUGE moth - we're talking serious caloric intake - and mostly protein I imagine. 

When I first saw it, the spider was about an inch away from the moth.  I went inside and mentioned to my kids that they had the opportunity to see nature in action - the circle of life and all that stuff - but my eldest demanded that I SAVE THE MOTH!

Fine.

I didn't NOTICE it moving, but by the time I took a few pics the spider was almost touching the moth.  Quite frankly, I'm not sure this moth deserves to live and pass on its genes.  I'm pretty sure that if a spider AS BIG AS ME was sneaking up on me, I'd figure it out a bit sooner! 

For scale I should point out that these things were both GI-NORMOUS!  That moth is about 2 inches across and I bet that spider was 2 inches from the end of its back leg to the end of its front leg.

... I can only imagine that the spider would have pounced within another minute or so, but I brushed it away (no, not with my hand - are you freakin' nuts!?) and got the moth to fly away. 

Wolfie ran behind the porch light and I can only imagine that he's really pissed at me.  God only knows how much time he spent sneaking up on that moth, and I'm pretty sure I heard him smacking his lips!  Anyway, I'm hoping he's not smart enough to hold a grudge.  I didn't see him when I left for work this morning, but that means NOTHING - I know he's creeping around that porch. 

Well, all I can say is bring it on, Wolf Man!  But be prepared to swim - what the kids don't know won't hurt them!