This morning I went into the garage to put the recycling bin away. The garage is an outbuilding, a barn, well over 100 years old made of local stone. I find it fascinating. Unfortunately when I moved the ordinary bin out of the way there was a huge, giant, enormous, big, enormous (did I say enormous?), big spider on the lid. I think that it was a Cardinal spider.
The French Wikipedia is more dramatic as it gives the maximum length of the spider, including legs, as up to 13 cm which is just over 5 inches! The English Wiki talks of body length only. Mine wasn’t that big. It’s fast too; speeds recorded up to 3.5 Km/h = 2.17 mph. As it happens it is harmless to humans (excepting heart attack when you see one up close).
In bad weather I hang the washing out in the garage – I really hope that the spider does not like fabric conditioner.
This is what I wrote about the barn a few years ago: The barn
The tunnels mentioned in the story were built many hundreds of years ago and were a way of moving protestants to safety during the many religious conflicts.
2 comments:
I wonder if the three musketeers would have done as well as they did if they'd been up against the Cardinal Spider instead of Cardinal Richelieu?
Dru: I'm sure they would have beat a hasty retreat. The spider was named after Cardinal Wolsey who was either terrified of them or regarded them as lucky depending on which legend you prefer. As there were a lot of them at Hampton Court, I think we can rule out the luck for him, at least.
Post a Comment