Do you like spiders? There aren't really many dangerous spiders in Melbourne. The most common dangerous one is called a whitetail and if you get a nip from one, your skin starts to die and you end up getting welty sore type things. We’ve also seen the redback in our garden and these can give you a nasty bite. Contrast this to the stuff they get up in Sydney like the funnelweb, the whitetail and redback seem pretty tame in comparison.

No, Melbourne's spiders tend to go for the psychological angle. Take, for example, the huntsman. It may not be very dangerous, but it's big enough to scare the death out of me everytime and they get the adrenaline pumping mightily.

We’ve had some big ones in recently, (you know the type, huge hairy legs wearing clod hopper boots and as big as my hand!). Sometimes they give me a real scare and I always holler for my husband Terry to come and remove them far preferring them outside than inside. Sometime I think they deliberately lurk on the curtains or suddenly appear on a wall to give me a fright.

Use to have one in our old house whom we nicknamed Fred. Fred lurked but we could never catch him he'd disappear as soon as he saw us. Funnily enough he'd use to appear during dinner parties leering at us from the wall. Gave the ladies quite a fright at times - Terry would just nod and say "that's Fred". Quite a party piece. Except one day one lady felt something crawling up her leg. Thought it was the cats tail - shortly after I saw Fred appear from under the dinner table, making his way across the carpet - he had a big grin on his face. Little devil! Not sure what happened to Fred when we moved. Found him lurking behind a bookcase when the removers were in and Terry rescued him and put him in the garden but I’m sure he would have made his way back inside as he was use to comfort.

A week or two ago I encountered an enormous one in my study at home. It was big enough that I'd swear I could see it grinning at me. I'm pretty sure I could see the hairs on its legs. Then when I summoned up the courage to trap it, it escaped from me - it must have seen me coming and it scampered along the wall to hide behind the curtain.

The other night I saw it again in the hallway. At least I really hope it was the same one - the thought of two such beasts lurking gives me the chills. Reminds me of the time that I woke up having felt something run across my face. I screamed, jumped out of bed and in the process woke Terry. Grumpily he told me not to be so daft but when we moved back the covers guess what we found? A huntsman trying to get comfy! Needless to say we sprayed Baygon in the bedroom the next day. Now Huntsmen are okay outside, but I really don't need them snuggling up to me inside especially in the bed!

You should our moths. They are humungous. Sometimes larger than two hands. We don't see them very often but when they are around you can literally hear them flapping their wings a mile away and when they knock up against the windows you think the house is being attacked. Terry won't kill a thing. Everything is rescued and placed outside. I reckon most our insect neighbours know this and think we are an easy touch and keep coming back.

Mind you, when we saw a family of rats tucking into the sunflower seed on the bird feeding table (when they saw us watching the disappeared very quickly up the drain pipe and into the roof area) Terry soon changed his mind. Nice looking family they were too. But the rustlings in our walls and the thumps on the ceiling told us that things were getting out of hand family wise so I'm afraid we had to put down some rat poison which was a great shame. Within a week things were quiet around the house again.

We often have possum visitors. Saw one last night whilst we were parking our car in the garage. He trotted passed us, glanced at us and continued on his way across the driveway and along the garden as bold as you like. Not a bit scared.

Now these little devils can get into your ceilings and in between walls as well. They are really cute little devils but the problem is they piddle and their piddle has a tendency to stink. Luckily our possums build their nests in the trees that surround us but we still have one or two visitors in the roof. You can hear them lift the roof tiles and start scrabbling around. Sometimes they go absolutely crazy and you hear them running and jumping from one end of the ceiling to the other. Not good when you are tyring to sleep. We had some gutter guard put in and this seems to have helped but they still seem to be getting in. I think they think they roof void is their playing space. At least they don't piddle - now if they started that it would be time to call Peter the Possum Man in who traps and rescues them and then deposits them in the countryside somewhere. Trouble in the possums have a way of finding their way back to their same territory and creating havoc again. Not that they worry us too much ... it's just that when people come and stay they wonder what on earth is going on up in the nether regions of the house. We tell them fear not, it's only our resident ghosts running around!