Big. Honkin'. Spiders.

Many years ago – okay, many decades ago – I spent a summer each in Indiana and in Oklahoma on separate college jobs. In both locations, I was astounded to find Big Honkin’ Spiders were fairly commonplace. (I won’t post any stock photos of spiders for the comfort of readers with arachnophobia.)

In retrospect, they were probably wolf spiders – harmless but kinda startling, if you know what I mean. Wolf spiders aren’t web spinners, but instead run after or ambush their prey. They’re well-known for carrying their babies on their back. We find them often in our house. Including their leg span, they rarely exceed an inch-and-a-quarter, maybe once in a while an inch-and-a-half across. I use a bug-catcher to scoop them up and put them outside.

While none of us in the Lewis family are overly fond of spiders, neither are we overly fond of killing them and do our best to not harm them. There are exceptions, however. One time Older Daughter messaged me as follows: “I just want you to know I fought an intense ten-minute battle with a wolf spider and only screamed a little bit. Aren’t you proud of me?” My answer: “You’re a veteran of the Arachnid Wars.”

Anyway, Younger Daughter is now living in a pretty little duplex apartment with a basement in the Pacific Northwest. She messaged the other day and wrote, “The spiders here are huge (even bigger than Idaho).”

I replied, “How big?”

She answered, “I still don’t know the species. It looked like a wolf spider, but it was about 3-4 inches in length. Maybe some kind of huntsman? Anyway she’s still living in my basement somewhere, probably eating mice or something.”

Huntsman spiders are found in the U.S., but generally only in more southern areas, so it was unlikely she saw one of those. I said, “Nah, they’re wolf spiders. Those suckers can get HUGE. You should see the ones in the Midwest.”

A bit later she messaged again: “Actually I just googled biggest house spiders in the Pacific Northwest, and found the aptly named Giant House Spider. Pretty sure this is it. This is their distribution. Look at that little green blob right over my house!”

Wow. I’d never even heard of the Giant House Spider, and immediately looked it up. It seems the species is native to Europe and was accidentally introduced to the U.S. over a hundred years ago, where it gained a foothold on opposite sides of the country: The Pacific Northwest, and the Northeast. Whee.

And yeah, those babies are huge. Three to four inches across is not unusual. Unlike wolf spiders, they’re web-spinners (albeit a rather messy funnel web). Males are inclined to wander at this time of year, searching for mates.

New fear unlocked. I don’t know if my bug-catcher could even handle something that big. Yowza.