Flies and spiders...

One of the first things we did when we moved into the house was to remove all of the revolting old lampshades, a selection of which Jo has blogged about already. However, what we also found during this process was fifty years of insect mortality, in a kind of moth's graveyard...

And last night, Jo found a big spider in her paperwork...

This is an Australian Whitetail, an immigrant to New Zealand. Long believed to have a poisonous, ulcerating bite, the Whitetail is now considered only as harmful to humans as a wasp or a bee. Still not pleasant if you get bitten, so to be on the safe side we took it outside and stomped on it. That's life on the farm.