8 Legged Freaks

“Shit! Shut the windows, QUICK!” Dan seizes up, pointing out the front window. I instantly think something has gone wrong with the vehicle, we’re pelting south along the Pacific Highway towards Newcastle and all of a sudden Danny isn’t his usual calm and composed self. “”Huntsman!” he growls, quick!”
A large pile of legs and fur scuttles towards us along the bonnet of Cheech, our trusty Holden Jackaroo. It stops short of the windscreen and maintains its grip despite our 60kmph progress. Half the size of an adult hand, this arachnid has a glint in each of its eight eyes and although I don’t have a big problem with spiders I don’t fancy wrestling with this one. It edges towards the edge of the bonnet and then makes a dash for the passenger side window, which I’d pulled shut seconds earlier.

I can see three of its hairy legs strutting out from behind the wing mirror. On the walkie talkie I’m telling the other two vans about our present plight. They pull alongside on the three-lane Highway and I see Becki and Bev screeching. On the far side of Kylie, the vehicle they drive, I see Laura looking in completely the opposite direction with a hand covering her eyes as an extra precaution: she isn’t a spider fan as we discovered back in Orbost, Vic, when another Huntsman invited itself into our cabin and plunged to the floor web assisted.

Our spider, slightly larger than our pal in Victoria, decides to make a dash for our roof and chooses the front windscreen as the most direct path. Kate screams her usual on-off scream, “ahhhhhhhh, ahhhhhh, ahhhhhhh!” Dan clenches his teeth, one eye on the road and another on the six inch critter which is currently displaying its ugly grey underbody to the unhappy occupants of Cheech the Jackaroo. Simon pulls alongside in George and I see him mouth “OH MY GOD” as the spider finally disappears out of view. Dan’s flicked a switch and the windscreen wipers are swinging furiously but its too late, our little friend has ascended too far.
“If that thing gets in here I’m going to crash the car,” said Dan matter-of-factly.
“Pull over then mate, I’ll get it off,” I told him, with a calm sense of urgency. Dan obliged, finding a dusty sideline with enough space for three vehicles. “We’re pulling over,” I talk into the radio.

The Huntsman had plonked itself right I the middle of the roof, out of reach from either side of the jeep. Simon jumped out behind us and ran across, mini-cam in hand. “Dan, tell us your thoughts, what’s just happened?” he asks the arachnophobic driver, at the same time as positioning him close to the car so the spider, which had by now ventured out onto a side windscreen, was in the background of the shot. Dan relayed the story, always keeping a worried eye on the Huntsman, which by now I was preparing to sweep off the vehicle with the only implement of choice, a metal salad fork courtesy of Bev’s mad scramble in the back of Kylie. “Well that’s going to do a whole lot of good,” I said as she passed it to me. “I’d be quite happy to be the spider right now.” And then it was all too late. Before Dan had finished talking to the camera and as I edged closer with my culinary sword the spider sprinted into the rear wheel well, disappearing for good. Suddenly, we all became aware of just how many spider entrances there are in an old car. The gaps in between doors and frames looked mammoth and god knows how many underground passages there were emerging from the chassis. Kate, Dan and I got back in, slamming all doors shut. Kate pulled her knees up to her chin, Dan looked at me with a blank face. “If that things gets in here I’m going to crash,” he reassuringly told me one last time before starting up the engine.