Murder by Death

MT and I received a gift voucher last year for a weekend at a gorgeous inn located in Beechworth, Victoria, a former gold-mining town in the foothills of the Great Dividing Range.  With one thing and another, we only finally got a chance to use it this past weekend.  It was gorgeous!  We were right in the centre of the town, surrounded by birds and just minutes from waterfalls and a scenic gorge drive.

We spent Sunday morning hiking (in the rain) and we got some great photos:

Afterward, I thought I'd be a smart girl and use the facilities before we moved on to the next hike.  I'm putting the rest of this under a page break - DO NOT CLICK READ MORE if you are not a fan of bugs...  you've been warned.

So, as I mentioned I went over to the relatively nice looking building and went inside and gave it what I thought was a very thorough inspection (we'd been warned numerous times that brown snakes had been particularly active in the area lately).  Everything looked ok so I did what you do in those buildings.

Just as I was about finished I felt a prickling and looked down to my left to see this:

(not my photo... didn't have my camera with me and also, I was having a stroke.)

CLIMBING ON MY ASS!!!  ON. MY. ASS!!

Of course there was loud yelling - I'm pretty sure I scared the crap out of God himself.  He was about the size of the palm of my hand.  I knocked him off and hauled my possibly bitten ass out of there, back to the car where MT was waiting.  I then proceeded to drop my pants right there and made him look for fang marks.  (At the risk of making the story less interesting, we were the only ones in the parking lot.)  Thank all that is holy I didn't get bit - I'm guessing the prickling I felt was the hair on its legs, which is still enough to keep me awake at night. 

I had been hoping in vain for koalas, kangaroos, maybe a wombat or wallaby.  Instead I get a gargantuan spider on my butt.

Ugh.