Are you afraid of spiders? I’m not particularly, but I live in the country and I’ve become accustomed to having lots of spiders around me, even poisonous ones. What I’ve learned about spiders is that they tend to move slowly. They certainly can move quickly if they want to, but if there’s one on the wall, I don’t rush to kill it because I know I have plenty of time. I’ve even found spiders in my bed, and I can tell you that I can do without that. As a child, I had a book titled “Be Nice to Spiders.” The premise of the book was that spiders are good for us to have around because they kill harmful pests and things like that.
There’s actually a phobia called Arachnophobia, which is the profound fear of spiders. The fear of spiders is so common that they named a condition for it. Now, just being afraid of spiders doesn’t mean that you have Arachnophobia. That is used to label people who are afraid of spiders in a way that’s paralyzing. Most people aren’t afraid of spiders to that extent. However, a man recently uploaded a video to Facebook that showed a huge spider carrying a mouse up the side of his refrigerator. Think about that for a minute. First of all, how big does a spider need to be to carry a mouse? Secondly, how strong does that spider have to be to drag it up a refrigerator. That is one muscled-up spider.
As it turns out, the spider is a Huntsman spider, and they’re also called “giant crab spiders” because they’re so large. These spiders have eight eyes and the really big ones in Laos can grow to be between 9.8 and 11.8 inches in diameter. Some people confuse them with tarantulas, but they’re a different species. The Facebook post has since been deleted but we found the video on YouTube. The original Facebook video had more than 23 million views and the comments were hilarious. One person said, “This made my skin crawl.” Another person asked this important question: “For those afraid of mice and spiders, which one is worse?” Perhaps the response that reflects what most of us feel when watching this video is, “Oh hell no.”
The man who uploaded the video wants to make one thing clear. He didn’t harm this spider. He said they even gave him a name: Hermie. He added, “We have adopted him, and he is now running his own extermination business out of our town Coppabella. Oh, he is also now paying rent.” Ha. Watch this video below. Be prepared to be completely creeped out. Or amazed. Your call.
