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Why you should carefully check your letterbox when living in Australia

A South Australian resident has had difficulty retrieving her mail in recent weeks thanks to an intruder and its offspring making themselves at home inside her letter box.

Adelaide Hills resident Kelsie shared a photo to Reddit on Monday which would send even the mildest of arachnophobes into a cold sweat.

Pictured was a giant spider surrounded by dozens of newborns which had emerged from a nearby sac.

Kelsie told Yahoo News Australia that she had thankfully checked inside the box before sticking her hand inside.

She instead had to resort to using a stick to retrieve her post.

Huntsman spider with its baby spiders pictured in an Adelaide Hills letter box
Kelsie found the spiders lurking inside her letter box. Source: Reddit/ ponkywonky101

“He stayed in there for a few weeks while we continued to get our mail out using a stick,” she said.

She said the offspring slowly began to disperse after several days but some had remained with the parent inside the letter box.

As expected, the post was inundated with comments from users horrified by the image.

“When a spider looks like a crab, it is no longer a spider. It's a f****** murder machine with eight legs,” one person wrote.

Others went with the predictable “bring in the flame thrower” gags.

Nothing to be scared about, expert says

Spider expert from Macquarie University’s Department of Biological Sciences, Dr Lizzy Lowe, told Yahoo News Australia that the spider appeared to be a Huntsman.

While the photo struck fear into dozens online, Dr Lowe said such a discovery should be viewed as “an amazing natural phenomenon” and not something to be scared of.

She said that a misunderstanding of insects and spiders can often result in homeowners reaching for pesticides which can kill off “our good bugs”.

Huntsman spiders often keep homes free of others bugs such as cockroaches and mosquitos and pose little risk to humans.

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