Emily Puckering
A family revealed the absolutely unfathomable fact that they shared their home with a ridiculously massive spider for an entire year.
Yep, my skin is crawling too.
The family, who are very obviously from Australia, first shared a glimpse of their eight-legged lodger back in 2020 when son Jake Grey posted a horrifying snap of the arachnid on Facebook.
Shared on the Australian Spider Identification Group, Jake, from Cairns in Queensland, wrote: "Check out this big girl. Been watching her grow over last year."
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Yikes.
It appears as if the spider is a huntsman - a very common breed of spider in the Land Down Under - and while they can grow to be huge and run at a terrifyingly fast speed, they're harmless to us humans.
So much so, that Jake and his family decided to name the spider - seeing as it made itself very much at home.
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Jake's mum, Anette, revealed to The Dodo that they named the spider Charlotte - revealing that she is, indeed, a girl!
“We've watched [Charlotte] grow over the last year or so,” Jake told The Dodo back in 2020.
“[She] never bothered us. She moves about the house, pops up room to room, eats all the bugs.”
Jake then revealed how Charlotte was around 15 centimetres wide, or around six inches. Which is very big for a spider, I must add.
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And Annette even added later in a comment online: “I think [Charlotte] is getting bigger."
Understandably, Charlotte's presence in the Grey's home spooked a few of their family and friends, some of whom jokingly suggested the house be burned down to get rid of her.
But Anette was having none of it, writing: “I don’t kill them. [Charlotte’s] harmless.”
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While it appears as if Charlotte has finally flown the nest, Anette's decision to not kill her turned out to be a pretty wise one as an expert recently revealed why you shouldn't kill spiders in your home.
Matt Bertone, an Extension Associate in Entomology at the North Carolina State University, explained how spiders are an important part of nature and our 'indoor ecosystem'.
Not only that, but the scary little critters are also 'fellow organisms in their own right'.
And believe it or not, spiders can actually serve as welcomed guests in many households given that they are mostly harmless and provide a whole range of services like 'eating pests' with some even eating 'other spiders'.