SAN DIEGO — The creepy, crawly critters have been spotted around San Diego lately with people posting on social media, wondering, “What kind of spiders are they?”
“I thought, ‘Oh my God! What is that thing?’ I mean they were huge,” said MaryDawn Perry, who was startled Monday when she found two spiders floating in her friend’s swimming pool near Grossmont College. “When they were in the water, they looked like baby juvenile tarantulas, they were huge!”
Sometimes mistaken for small tarantulas, ‘trapdoor spiders’ are native to Southern California.
CBS 8’s Brian White asked, “Have you ever seen a spider like that before?” Perry replied, “No, not that big. They’ve lived in that house 50+ years and they’ve never seen anything like that.”
Perry hasn’t been the only one spooked by these curious-looking spiders.
“It was very, very creepy,” said Deb Reed, who came upon a trapdoor spider while at work in Kearny Mesa Monday. “I see this spider the size of a quarter, like the weirdest-looking thing I’ve ever seen. I just started screaming, I didn’t know what the heck it was. I thought it was a tarantula at first.”
The spiders are named after the way they construct their burrows complete with a trapdoor allowing them to catch unsuspecting prey like crickets and other insects. Males wander around in the fall, searching for females to mate with, which is probably why we’re seeing more of them now.
“I was like, ‘Oh my God, I’m glad it didn’t get inside,’” said Perry. “You know, it looked like if it could’ve bit you, it could’ve hurt.”
Trapdoor spiders are non-aggressive and harmless to humans, but as with any spider bite, it may sting a bit. As for Reed, she and her coworker gave their little visitor safe passage outside.
“We got a little piece of paper and something to scoop it up with and put it on the piece of paper and walked it outside and put it in the grass,” said Reed. “Don’t know if I ever want to again either.”
WATCH RELATED: Spike in spider season across San Diego County