The health minister in Queensland, Australia was interrupted when a huntsman was found crawling on her.
Wait, wait, she’s talking about the impact of COVID-19 on her community — the spider is cute and adorable (although we don’t even get a photo of it), but isn’t that a relatively unimportant part of the event to be making the news? If I were there, I’d volunteer to cuddle the spider so she can get on with the important message.
Doesn’t their national anthem contain lines:
“Our land abounds in nature’s gifts
Of beauty rich and rare;”
Right?
@Ice Swimmer #1:
Yeah, the gift of a highly-mobile neurotoxin delivery system.
She seems remarkably calm about it, even able to crack jokes. She may not like huntsman spiders, but she’s obviously not phobic or panicked about it. Meanwhile, she stays on message that vaccination mandates make sense for communities and businesses. Good job. Her name is Yvette Maree D’Ath, a Labor member of the Legislative Assembly of Queensland. I gather Labor in Australia means “center-left”, as opposed to Liberal, which is “center-right”.
Huntsman. Bah. Funnelweb would be news.
@robro and the Nationals that have become the coal lobby, and One Nation which is far right wackaloon.
robro@3–
That was true about 15 years ago. Unfortunately, under the pernicious influence of the Murdoch media and politicians being terrified of challenging his policy objectives, the needle has moved Labor to “centre” and Liberal to “hard-right”.
I am not ashamed to state that if it had been me I would have wet myself ,screamed my head off ,and ran from the scene .
Not necessarily in that order .
What I learned from the clip was what Signing is for ‘spider’. Which is really cute… and accurate assuming thumbs are not used.
Impressed they let the spider go on its way. Here in the US, someone would have stamped on it immediately.
We’ve had a spike of 31 new cases, 109 active cases total, in Queensland, just in the last few days, and everyone is a bit worried. They were just about to open up full interstate travel again, and now it’s back to mandatory masks in public. Hopefully the anti-vax/anti-mask dickheads keep their heads down. Whenever they clash with police, I never know who to root for.
Huntsman spiders are the German Shepherds of the spider world. They can look scary, but they’re big puppies, and pretty good guards against unwanted visitors like flies and mosquitoes.
I credit a lot of Queensland’s success against covid to our Premier, our Minister for Health, and our Chief Health Officer all being no nonsense women who are excellent at their jobs.
@tacitus #9:
Only the people without AR-15s.
@10 Yes,but do they eat Funnelweb spiders? First time I heard about Huntsmen was in a Nature programme.
It recreated a car crash where the driver pulled down the sun visor,and a Huntsman fell into the drivers lap.
Next scene was a voice over saying Huntsmen are harmless,while showing a young girl with one perched on her arm.