Lisa Van Kula Donovan is a humor columnist for The Morning Bulletin from Queensland, Australia.
As she also happens to love spiders, she keeps plenty of them right at her home.
One of her favorites is a large green-bellied huntsman spider named Smuk who she often pets and lets her walk on her arms.
While the spider looks quite terrifying and is bound to send shivers down the spine of many, Lisa said that Smuk is nothing to be afraid of.
Captioning her video on Instagram, Lisa, also known as wannabe entomologist, wrote:
“Smuk is doing well! And I know those legs are what creep most people out, but that’s my favourite part! And I know the Golden huntsman (Beregama Aires) is supposed to be the largest species in Australia, but I swear she looks bigger already than the two Golden adult females I have, and I believe she is only sub-adult. We shall see!”
After Lisa’s footage went viral, Smuk the spider received thousands of likes, with people telling Lisa how good her pet looks.
“Her little yellow face is sooo cuutteeee. Usually spiders with longer legs like this make me a little uneasy but she’s pretty neat,” one person wrote.
“These are cool! Following mostly to combat my fear of large spiders…” another commenter admitted.
“Would this type of spider be a common house spider where you live in Australia? Such a beautiful spider too!!” one person wondered
Lisa quickly responded by explaining that Smuk “was found in a shed on my friend’s property. Huntsman commonly is found in households. This particular one probably had more prey than it could handle being where it was, but it wouldn’t be out of the question for it to find its way to the house.”
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