70. First Time Seeing and Holding (sort of) a Funnel Web Spider

I was on night shift. I arrived in the ED to find patients galore and there were 19 people in the waiting room who still had not been seen.

I got changed out mf my cycling gear and into some scrubs, put on my bravest face and grabbed a stack of patient caz-cards and tried to blitz my way through some of the rubbish that had been waiting for a couple of hours. At least that way the numbers on the computer would look better and the waiting room would seem quieter.

About an hour and a half had passed and I was on my 9th patient when something caught my eye. I realised that I’d seen it already several times that night but my brain just hadn’t registered what I was looking at as I was so busy. Sitting on the counter of the front desk in a little clear plastic tub was a bloody great spider.

Now, I’ve seen the occasional “big” spider in my flat back home but they are pale in comparison to this monster. It was about 7cm long with thick black legs and a huge meaty body and practically dripping at the front of it were a pair of massive 1cm fangs.

At first I thought it was either fake or dead so I picked up the tub to look at it asking the staff what it was doing in the department. However, just as I brought it up to my face the damn thing pounced at me and I almost dropped the container.

“Watch you don’t drop that on the floor,” said one of the receptionists sounding almost nonchalant, “That one’s really angry and it keeps trying to escape. If it bites you you’ll be in a world of hurt real soon”

Needless to say I put the tub back down with a great deal of respect and soon she stopped jumping up the sides of the pot. Although there was a lid in place it looked a bit flimsy and I’m sure with a couple more jumps and the lid would have been knocked off and we’d all be in a world of hurt.

It was a funnel web spider and apparently people collect them and bring them into emergency departments around the country so that specialist units can gather them up and milk them for venom to help produce anti-venoms. The last fatality from a bite was in 1980 but effective anti-venoms have been around since 1981. However looking at those giant fangs and having the receptionist say, “Do you know that those fangs can bite through a finger nail?” didn’t make me feel any more comfortable about the existence of anti-venom. In fact it just served to make the plastic container and its lid look weaker and totally insufficiently for holding such a dangerous creature.

Later as I slept I had dreams of again holding that container and the funnel web sinking it’s fangs into my thumb through the clear base of the plastic tub. The more I think about it the more I wonder why any fool would trust, potentially, their life to 1mm thick plastic. I’m insisting on metal boxes from now on.