So not so long ago, I had a GIANT spider web in my car. When I told my roommate about it, he wanted to make sure it wasn’t a black widow. You know, one of the common poisonous spiders in CA. He checked the car and felt the web and assured me it wasn’t a black widow. So I felt safe and didn’t worry about it any more.
Yesterday morning I found the culprit. I was driving down my street and when I came to the stop sign, I looked out my windshield (as is appropriate when looking for traffic). And there, on my dash mat, is a BIG BROWN HAIRY SPIDER. Much like the one that was on the outside of my sister’s car (see linked entry). But this one was INSIDE my car. His body was about the size of a quarter and with his legs he spanned about the circumference of a silver dollar. He was pretty big. So I pull over. And as soon as I throw my parking brake on, he crawls down into my defroster vent. So I think, “Alright. You can’t get to him now. Just get a move on or you are going to be late.”
So I start driving and I start getting creeped out because I know that he is in my car. So I turn on the defrosters, set it to the coldest temperature I can, and begin blasting the AC. I think this is a smart thing to do. I will freeze that little bastard out of the dashboard.
And you know what, my idea worked. After about two minutes, up crawls this eight-legged freak. And I pick up a napkin, while driving, and try to grab him. I don’t want to smash him because he is huge and I don’t want to have to clean spider-innards off of my dashboard cover. Not only that, but he has survived long enough to get that big and it seems a shame to kill him. But on the first grab, I didn’t grab him hard enough and I only shave off some of his hair on his body. So I grab again, this time accidentally smashing some legs. But on the third grab, I get him and I open the napkin up out the window and I assume he lands outside my car on the road.
But then I realize that I might not have had my hand far enough out the window during the release and that there was a possibility that the wounded spider was in my backseat. So now I have to pull over and check because the only thing worse than freezing a spider out of your dashboard is to then subsequently be attacked from behind by the same spider. I checked and I didn’t see him, so hopefully the release was successful and he isn’t hiding under my driver’s seat plotting his attack.
I am under the impression that it was a wolf spider. But can anyone tell me how to distinguish between a brown wolf spider and a brown recluse spider? Because I heard those are NASTY and I don’t want to accidentally mistake a deadly spider for a non-deadly one.
