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"Arachnophobes" ... You Have Been Warned !
Shoshin
No one in particularNowhere Special Veteran
"Funnel webs are one of the most venomous spiders found in Australia"
"The terrifying footage shows the creepy moment a man finds an unwelcome eight-legged visitor inside his son's running shoe after they were left outside over the weekend."
Oh how I miss the creepy crawlies of Australia 
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When my wife first moved to Australia (from NZ) many years ago she told me she used to check her shoes every time she put them on for the first little while
Just a little while? I think I'd lock them in a safe and still check them, lol. give me big beasts over creepy crawlies any day! I am not one to just go around smacking them, but I give them a wide berth. And we have nothing venomous here in MN. One check in the pro column of a 6 month winter, lol.
@Bunks I know where your wife's coming from...Prior to arriving in Oz I was told all about the wonderful creatures that inhabited this fair land...So for the first few months on arrival in Oz I wouldn't walk barefooted on the grass and no way was I gonna leave my shoes outside...However after a while the anxiety left me and I grew to love them....
A poem I wrote for my children when they were small..
"Basic entomology can be interesting and fun
but finding out how creepy crawlies live is not for everyone!
Some people have a phobia about things that creep and crawl
but if they took time out to study them, they would have no fear at all !"
~Just more respect~
I have no problem with spiders although I am wary of Redbacks and white tailed spiders as they can actually be harmful. Especially to little kiddies.
We probably found half a dozen of each in the shed in my old house over the few years we were there. My wife kills them but I let them be.
A lot of people fumigate their houses and properties but that's not an option as far as I'm concerned.
The Funnel web spider can become even more aggressive( they are an aggressive spider by nature, more aggressive than most other spider species) and prone to attack, especially after their habitat has been disturbed by spray...This came out in research conducted back in the early 1980s in Sydney... Someone I knew back then was bitten by a Funnel web, and survived, the doctors believe he was fortunate in that it was first thing in the morning, after the spider had hunted its prey and it didn't have the full quota of toxic venom in its system...Well that was the theory at the time...
We have the Katipo spider (Kiwi cousin of the Red back) fortunately it is only found in some areas of NZ and within 200 metres from the shoreline...However the Red back has become established in some parts of NZ, shipped over in amongst cars and other things....And thanks alot Oz for the White tail, we have plenty of them and they are all over the place....
Remember the movie "Arachnophobia" well the spiders used in the movie came from here, the Avondale spider, AKA the Australian Huntsman spider, it is believed to have been shipped over with telegraph poles from Oz back in the 1920s and established itself in Avondale Auckland ...Avondale's not a place I'd recommend arachnophobes visit
Darwin apparently was caused to question God's existence and Wisdom, upon discovering and studying the behaviour of this wasp.
How could God, with his infinite compassion and benign control, ever have created such a monstrous "marriage"....? An animal that deliberately preys and ultimately tortures another in such a way, is surely, as far from a beatific creation as anything could be?
My house spiders come out to watch TV sometimes. They particularly like those Swedish crime thrillers, though personally I find the plots rather difficult to follow.
The spiders don't. See, they have more eyes, and limbs.
Their vision is better and their grasp of the plot unsurpassed.
My house spiders are still asleep. Wait until there is some warm sunshine...
The most dangerous encounter I've ever had with spiders involved a canoe, three arachnophobic children, and about a hundred tiny spiders, none of them any bigger than a pinhead. I thought we were all going to die.
Biological control-checks & balances ...Don't you just love Mother Nature