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Deadly female

Sunday 11 October 2026 at 05:14

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Edited by Martin Cadwell, Sunday 11 October 2026 at 05:24

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Opinion

Ah, yes. Sorry?

[ 3 minute read ]

When I chucked the female Giant House Spider out my living room window in early September I didn't expect to find her on my bathroom floor last night. 'House Spiders die if you put them outside.' I had been told or read. I can't help but to think that House Spiders have only other spiders to worry about as predators. The biggest problem for Giant House Spiders are surely humans, no? Yet, they do not just run away when they see a human close by; they stay motionless. Even poking her with a door wedge didn't get her to move for a while. Then off she went at about the pace of a two year old child walking. I imagine the spider was sprinting though.

I followed her and she stopped only half-hidden near one of my old bicycles in my bedroom. Experience told me I had time to fetch a piece of cardboard and a glass. Sure enough she was still there pretending to be the discarded stalk of a huge tomato. At 65mm the last time I measured her she had little chance of fooling me, even if I do have a glut of tomatoes at the moment.

This time, she was angry at being captured. With the glass over her and the cardboard beneath she was trapped and I picked her up to eye level. Ooh, she looked like she was threatening me. Her front legs were against the glass in that half-reared up position that a spider does when they are about to attack. I didn't rotate her, the glass and the cardboard to see if she would face me. If I had and she did, I may have had to throw her out into a much colder environment to the one I had done last month; our low humidity summer. At nine degrees Celsius outside this morning she might slow down a bit.

I dumped her in the living room near to where I had last seen the male Giant House Spider. I may have just signed his death warrant. 'For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.'

When the Himalayan peasant meets the he-bear in his pride,
He shouts to scare the monster, who will often turn aside.
But the she-bear thus accosted rends the peasant tooth and nail.
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

[...]

The Female of the Species - Rudyard Kipling, 1911

https://www.heretical.com/miscella/kipling1.html

I was a bit alarmed at how easily she could run under closed doors. My doors have a big gap underneath them to allow them to run over carpet. I don't have carpet; I spill too much too often. I was also surprised by how angry she was at being captured; does she remember being thrown out the last time. Sometimes, I pretend I am a bit fey and when she fell to the floor I had a sudden spike of weird perception. She seemed surprised. If she can remember much, she would remember my living room floor and certainly, if the male is still around, she would be able to smell him? I went to bed hoping that she was gratified and not vengeful. I didn't want to wake up with her trying to suffocate me by dragging my pillow over my face or something; or spitting in my eyes.

I suppose spiders regard some places as 'home'. I mean they are not randomly stopping and thinking, 'This will do,' are they? Trap-door spiders don't. I hope she realises that I won't throw her out again and she is 'home'. Hats off to her tremendous effort in making her way to my bathroom window. It is the one that is open the most and the longest. Ooh, she is too smart for comfort. I know that I under-estimate the intelligence of creatures but who bothers to try to work out how a spider thinks, except for the few?

I have to look down at the floor all the time whenever I move around in my home, or if I am so affected, 'our' home. Already, I am thinking I might have to move my old bicycles out to make way for a piece of art.