Amelia43 wrote: ↑04 Feb 2024, 05:29
As a child I lived in a part of Sydney where funnelweb and trapdoor spiders ran rampant.
I'm glad that you made the distinction. Trapdoor spiders I saw ONLY outside, holes with trapdoors were in dry sandy, or fine-dust ground. We had trapdoor spiders on the sand plain at Ghooli, just eight miles away, but I don't recall seeing any in our yard on the quartz ridge at Southern Cross.
while my tiny and not usually heroic mother battled a funnel-web with a broom for over an hour. The beast kept rising up on its rear legs and attacking the broom. Feisty maternal heroism won the day.
Maybe the funnel-web was smart enough to know the law of the jungle - never come between a mother and her offspring.
and wasn't long for this world.
But see
this post.
Still rather wary of creatures with eight legs and large ants................
I once had four great aunts, but they lived in another storey ...
Cheers, Chris