(no subject)

Things one does not expect to encounter while living in Scotland:

Tropical-sized spiders.

Maybe not quite... but still. Bigger than anything I've seen in Michigan, where it's actually WARM in the summer. Whatever they are, I assumed the dead one in the corner of the shower room when we moved in would be the last we saw of them, sort of pegging it as a summer thing, and therefore did NOT expect to find myself sharing the tiny, tiny bathroom this evening with a spider that covered a total surface area of 2 1/2" and had legs over 1/8" thick. I am not normally the kind of girl that shrieks about spiders, but the spider-size-to-room-size ratio was not in my favor here.

Although according to Evette, in my defense, "That's not a spider, it's a PONY."

And according to Laura, much to the chagrin of Evette and I, "Oh, I thought I vacuumed that up earlier! It must've escaped!"

Which means that either it was hardcore enough to survive a vacuum, or that this was ANOTHER one.

Obviously, these are some form of Radioactive Death Spider, and (sorry, Lenya) this one was not dealt with using any sort of mercy. Hopefully it will not grow two more inches in the night and crawl back up out of the toilet to greet me in the morning.

EDIT:// Thank you, Google Image Search. Whatever it was, it looked like this.