Since moving to Costa Rica, we’ve had to deal more heavily with spiders than even our stint in California forced us to. Literally, every single time I go to use my bathtub/shower, I first have to get a cup, catch the rather large 8-legged creature running around the drain, put him outside, and then resume running the water for my bath.

Apparently my bathroom is a spider’s paradise, since I find them lurking about in there every single day. If they aren’t running around in the tub, then they’re scaling the wall above my mirror and sink.

When we first arrived, one was living behind the toilet. Can you imagine? Every time you sit down to take a tinkle, fearing that the hairy miniature monster is going to come crawling up your leg or worse… on your butt! We allowed the guy to reside behind the toilet until the day he got himself in a jam and crawled INSIDE THE ACTUAL TOILET BOWL. It was quite irritating rescuing him from the bowl, without getting him wet, and without getting bitten. He struggled and jumped, but in the end, we captured him and put him outside.

Since that day, we’ve retrieved from our bathroom and released back into the wild, no less than ten spiders… probably more, but who’s counting at this point?

Two nights ago, I walked to my computer, sat down, and started to type. I saw my smallest cat jump up at something on the curtain. When I turned around to look, I saw the biggest spider I’ve ever seen in my life, and it was only two feet away from me. I’m not kidding, it was BIGGER than this:

I woke Sean up and we haphazardly caught it and put it outside. I thought to myself,”Well, ok, at least that is probably the biggest we’ll ever have to deal with.”

So, today, while our housekeeper is over, she brings our attention to a spider that is even BIGGER than the giant we’d come across two nights ago. He’s not inside, though. He’s sitting still on our back porch making his way into our kitchen. She gets the broom and shoos him into the bushes. Then she says,”He’s a baby.”

A BABY?!?

I couldn’t snap a photo, due to my camera battery being over at Stephane’s house. I’ve Google image searched myself to death looking for an adequate example of what he was like. The closest thing I have found is this:

The only difference is he was dark grey, almost black. She then told us that this type of spider has a horrible bite, but not deadly. When he’s full grown, he’ll be covered in grey hair. I asked if it was a tarantula, and she said no.

Maybe it was the same one from two nights previous, and he just grew. So yeah, I’m basically waiting for this type of scenario to occur:

Am I going to have to dress up in something like this, in order to scare them off:

Or maybe that would just encourage them?