See a spider, kill a spider, has always been my motto. They just have too many legs.
The largest found was only this summer, in May. It was around 5" across and was identified as a huntsman spider. The second picture down on this page
http://bnellis.eu/nature/natspider.html
Multiple white and black segments, looked more like a zebra to me. I was overruled on that one, and my wife and daughter between them managed to get it over the back wall alive.
But the things that really make my flesh creep are very small. Back in the UK I called them silverfish, and you usually got them around damp areas. here they love laying between door frames and wood scraps. and fall out at me when I move stuff. They get terminated with extreme prejudice.
The only scorpions I have ever seen here are tiny, not much over 1".
The first time I saw one, barely the inch long, I called over the Cypriot I was working with and said in typical tourist fashion "ooh, look, a scorpion" he came over, took one look to confirm my diagnosis, and ground it into mush under his boot heel. "they are poisonous" was his only comment.
Being surrounded by farmland we get a few rats and the occasional snake. There have been 4 snakes in our garden that I have seen, luckily none of the poisonous ones, but they come and go and bother no one.
Lizards and skinks.... Billions of lizards. Take 5 steps across any waste ground and youve disturbed at least two.
My garage roof is an apex shape, T&G boards across with tiles over, and I can hear them scuttling about under the tiles all the time. They are quite amusing and they often get quite close to us when we are sitting in the garden, but so far we havent managed to tame any. We find their egg shells in the garden stones every year.
