Sunday, July 08, 2007

EEEEEEEEK!!!!!

A friend came to visit last night while we were sitting outside. The monsoon had knocked out the power, so a group of residents were hanging around behind our residence trying to cool off. Someone happened to look up the wall we were leaning against and noticed something hairy. Given that we have a lot of Italians around here, that wasn't too surprising, but it had too many legs.




This is the third tarantula we've seen here, but it was also the largest one. It still isn't a big one, but big enough. Debbie also got to see her first scorpion last night. I run across them every day handling building materials and such at work, but before last night, all Debbie has seen was a couple smashed ones on the sidewalks.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

If I saw that here I would scream and run. Then I would make Matt squish it. I'll be having nightmares tonight thank-you very much :) Jenny

Ric said...

Actually, even though I have a touch of arachnophobia (my first instinct is to KILL! KILL! KILL!), tarantulas are different. For one thing, they don't scurry around like other spiders. They move very slowly and deliberately. They also don't seem to mind humans. Most, especially the males, will readily climb onto a hand and seem perfectly happy to sit there, and even appear to enjoy being petted.

Of course, you can bet your last dollar that it wasn't either mine or Debbie's hand in that photo! My excuse was that I was taking the pictures. Debbie's was that her arms are less that the minimum required Debbie-to-tarantula separation (approximately 100 feet).