This is Not a Funny Story. This is a Near Death Experience.

We're moving house today. The girls arrive this afternoon for 8 nights so we've got the family room at the motel booked. I was awake at 3am not able to sleep, so excited I was about shifting all our stuff and setting up "house".

7am finally rolled around, so off I skipped to reception to get the key to the new room. I've spent the best part of the last four hours making umpteen million trips between the two rooms with all our stuff.

Only now, on my last trip, have I noticed the spider.

Not just any spider. This spider is the size of Te Awamutu and has fangs.

After an involuntary release of my entire digestive system, I raced down the stairs to find the cleaning ladies and terrorise them with my tales of gigantic monsters from alien worlds.

Laughing at me while simultaneously rolling her eyes, one Very Brave Cleaning Lady ventured up to my room saying "I'll take a crate with me".

"Holy SHIT" I'm thinking... "what, like, is this one of those situations where if you find one, there's bound to be another eight or something???" then I realise she's taken it to stand on.

I bravely rushed off to reception to tell the man in there how scary it was and how brave I was and how I've never seen anything like it in my life, and I find that he - too - is laughing at me.

Unsure that I've appropriately portrayed how serious and life threatening this situation was to me, I try again to explain and I find I've fallen into the old fishing habit. My hands are about two feet apart and I'm saying words like "teeth" and "hairy" and "ran after me".

Realising that this is not a source of sympathy, or free wine to calm my nerves, I ventured back outside in time to see Very Brave Cleaning Lady walking back my way with a crate in one hand and scrunched up towel in the other.

"It's alright!" she says. "It was just a tarantula".