They can play fetch, roll over and play dead. You can pat them as they sit on your knee and they look up at you with those doe eyes. They love you unconditionally.

I’m not so enamored by those other furry creatures … you know the ones with four extra legs and six extra beady eyes? Yep, spiders.

They can’t fetch a thing (unless you take into account flies), they won’t roll over and play dead (unless assisted by a very large shoe and a massive can of bug spray). There’s nothing doey about any one of their eight eyes looking up at you. And I’m pretty sure spiders don’t know how to love. Not even their spouses, as some female versions are known to eat their mates after sex. So technically, there’s no loyalty.

The worst things about spiders is their unpredictability. You have no idea how these little suckers get into the house and you certainly don’t know where they’ll pop up.

Our household is mostly arachnophobic. My husband isn’t. He won’t kill a spider, instead taking great pleasure in flicking it into a bowl before chasing myself and our daughters around the house with said spider in said bowl, before releasing it back into the wilds of our backyard.

A recent case in point was only last week, when I heard blood curdling screams from our daughters upstairs. I recognised those screams … there’s a spider in the house.

They won’t ask their father, because they know the outcome. And I have been known, on the rare occasion, to actually kill a spider, but only under sufferance and usually when there’s no male in the house to do so.

But there was no way I was going anywhere near this Godzilla of all spiders in the upstairs bathroom (pictured right for proof of existence … and its ginormous hold on the world). This one was massive ... huge. It was the size of a dinner plate. It was so big it had its own post code.

Alas, it’s also no longer with us, thanks to a very brave boyfriend of daughter #1 who has a very large shoe size.

Apologies to those who actually like spiders.