THEY'RE HERE!
Householders across Scotland are being terrified by an invasion of giant spiders, some of them seven inches wide
THEY have scuttled into bathrooms and kitchens south of the Border.
Now giant house spiders are coming to a sink near you.
Householders across Scotland got in touch yesterday to tell us their arachnological horror stories – with one pensioner reporting a seveninch spider in her home.
Experts believe the warm, wet summer has swelled spider numbers and allowed them to grow to alarming sizes – as our pictures show.
One monster scurried into view as Zoe Redhead, 42, was having a glass of wine in her Edinburgh home.
Usually, Morgans the cat steps in, but she was nowhere to be seen – leaving Zoe, wife of Scots Commonwealth Games judo gold medallist Chris Sherrington, scrambling for a pint glass.
She said: ‘I’d just finished some wine and this big brown thing wandered into my view. I put a glass over it and it took up over half of the pint glass. I left it on the floor thinking about it for a bit. I was very brave, so I ended up putting it outside.
‘There was just this thought that if I drop this cup and it scuttles towards me, I’ll scream.’
Sightings show these spiders may be some of the biggest ever seen in Scotland, but experts are urging people to avoid killing them.
Marie McNeil, 46, of Paisley, Renfrewshire, found a spider in her house that was five inches across.
‘They are absolutely grotesque, you just have to go in for the kill,’ she said. ‘They can actually get up on their hind legs and confront you, which is quite terrifying. They will square up and look at you. They don’t realise there’s anything in the universe that’s bigger than them.’
‘My husband is a forest ranger and he said it was the biggest he’s ever seen.’
One spider was so large it woke up its host, who thought the noise was a mouse.
‘We have them in every night uninvited,’ Tracey Bennett, 44, of Edinburgh, said. ‘My husband was even woken by one the other night. It was large and in a paper gift bag beside his bed. He actually thought he heard a mouse.
‘My husband captured it and put it outside but I keep telling him they are just coming back in.’
House spiders normally span three inches but some recent specimens have measured a massive seven inches.
Elaine Morrison, 67, of Tillicoutry in Clackmannanshire, spotted one such creature and has had to beat another half a dozen away with her walking stick.
She said: ‘They do look scary. I’m getting pretty good at catching them. But I’m waiting for my son- i n- l aw now, he’s the chief spider-getter.’
Colin McNeil, a signmaker from Bishopbriggs, near Glasgow, saved his mother from a spider in her bedroom.
He said: ‘We found one that was five inches in my mum’s bedroom. She screams when she sees them – she’s an arachnophobe. I didn’t kill it, I just put it outside. I think spiders are our friends.’
Spiders are carnivores, eating insects and bugs, but are not top of the food chain – daddy-long-legs have venom specially designed to kill spiders.
Adam Hart, Professor of Science Communication at the University of Gloucestershire, said: ‘We’ve had another good summer, which means we might be in for another good year for large spiders or a bad year if you aren’t a fan.’
Chris Cathrine, regional co-ordinator of the British Arachnological Society, said: ‘House spiders’ fangs are too small to penetrate human skin and so can’t hurt you.’
Have you seen or caught a giant spider? Get in touch and send us your pictures. Call our office on 0203 615 4703.