Bloody hell @Fork Lock you've had your run in with spiders. Not sure I'd ever travel with your Buddy. I never understand that sort of reaction but my Sister is the same, although I've never had to steer for her.... My only run in with a spider of any significance was in southern France when I was trying to shoo a spider away from my tent where it had made a home under my door. After a couple of brushes away with my hand it suddenly grabbed hold of my finger, with quite amazing pressure from such a little critter, and bit me. It wasn't painful just a shock of what the cheeky thing did to a person hundreds of time it's size. I'm wary of those ones these days...
@Golgotha I still enjoy watching the courtship attempts of our common wolf spider here in the UK. I have some videos somewhere showing the male doing semaphore. Here is a photo I made of it doing it, if you use your imagination you can see the signaling going on.
As one of the last countries to not have established brown marmorated stink bug populations, our government spends huge efforts and money to keep them out. Most containers are fumigated before and after arrival to keep them out https://www.mpi.govt.nz/biosecurity...ed-stink-bug-threat-to-nz-and-identification/
I always wondered what the big fuss was, as I work in logistics. As kids we used to love the little green stink bugs which were fine unless they got scared