Spider Identification

It's mating season for these boys.  And when they have these urges, they come out into the open and march around in my house looking for the girls!  Sometimes they bite.

Got worse before it got better

My hubby was bitten sometime Saturday night we think.  His left bicep started to itch.  By Sunday bedtime when he finally became aware of it, the swollen area was the size of a mango pit.  The bite area looked a bit angry.  You don't need the details, but the skin area affected by the bite--oozing to get rid of the toxins--was 2x3".  The doctor at Urgent Care reassured us that the toxins were localized and would simply run their course.  Good news indeed since hubby was scheduled to leave on a 10-day backpack trip around Mt. Rainier in Washington State the next day.

2 1/2" across the legs

Then we saw another one of these giant spiders just like the three we had already seen during the past week.  Suddenly I knew that putting a name on these spiders was an important Thing I get to do today.  Should they be caught sweetly and gently and turned outdoors to live out their lives in peace?  Or should they be terminated?  Needed to know who they really were to answer that question.

I found an excellent spider identification chart on line that showed this exact image: it's a Hobo Spider.  Those little boxing gloves out front are the male genitalia, just so you know.  So there's no more Mrs. Nice Gal around these critters.  I've got a vacuum cleaner with a long hose.  Weeeeeeeefpt!  I'm certainly not the girl those guys are looking for!