Local News
David Schuler forwarded this story:
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — Entomologists say spiders are so prevalent that you’re never more than three feet away from one, anywhere you go. That realization may cause some residents of Colorado Springs to be even more jittery.
Tarantulas have been spotted in several neighborhoods in the south end of the city as mating season for the venomous spiders begins.
While tarantulas usually prefer more wide-open, arid conditions farther south of Colorado Springs where they can easily spot prey, the warm, dry weather in recent years may be pushing them farther north when they look for mates, said Jerry Prisk, plant and pest management technician at the Colorado State University Cooperative Extension.
“Until a few years ago, I never heard of people seeing them, even on the south side of town,” he said.
Ginny Hall found one of the spiders, with its imposing fangs, on her front doorstep when returning home late one night last week.
“She called me on my cell phone and said, ‘Come out here and get this thing out of my way,’” said her husband, Patrick Hall.
He removed the spider with a plastic container and took it to a different area, which Prisk said is a good idea.
Two words: Screw that!
I see a furry-ass tarantula anywhere near my own self, I am not going to offer it a ride in my to-date spider-free car. No, sir. I’m going to step on the little bastard. Then I’m going to spray it with chemicals. Then I’m going to set fire to the squishy, toxic remains. And perform the sacred Spider No Come Here No More dance around the ashes.
Assuming, of course, that I don’t first run away screaming like a little girl. Or, more accurately, like a grown man who really, really, really has problems with nature.
Thanks for the heads-up, David. You owe me the price of a refill on my Ambien prescription.
UPDATE: Turns out, Dave has a blog. Check it out.
I have a big freak-out thing when it comes to bugs, but once I had a tarantula put on my arm, no problem. I even petted him.
Know why? Cause he’s FURRY! I can deal with that. Go figure.
Just like cute li’l squirrels would be rats if it weren’t for that bushy tail
Thanks, Steve. Be very careful out there.
I am 100% with you on the bugs. I had a linguistics professor one time who in the middle of a lesson would hurl a rubber snake into the audience, to demonstrate how some shapes are hard-coded in humans as threats. I always wondered about that, because while snakes freak me out too, not to the extent that bugs do, even though I KNOW that the bugs are relatively harmless. Maybe because I almost never see snakes? I’ve had a problem with house centipedes in my basement recently, and every time I see one of the little freaks I squeal like a pig and go instantly into fight-or-flight mode, even though I know for a fact that they’re no threat. I’ve probably inhaled enough bug-killer to melt half my brain by now, but there’s just something . . . satisfying is the word, I think, about nerve-gassing the creepy crawlies.
“Tarantulas have been spotted in several neighborhoods in the south end of the city as mating season for the venomous spiders begins.”
Isn’t that why many other folks have moved to the Springs? That is, to find mates and, well, mate?
Huh, Steve?
Ed
I’m with Andrew. Tarantulas don’t bug me (huh, huh, he said bug) because they’re furry. Kinda like a small, eight-legged, multi-faceted-eye having cat.
With poisonous fangs.
I guess spending much of my youth, off and on, living in rural areas has made me indifferent to most creepy-crawlies, even snakes.
Except for daddy long-leg spiders. A nest of those things just creeps me out. For those who’ve never seen a big nest of these, it looks like something out of a bad alien invasion flick. Just this mass of spindly legs and tiny bodies, pulstating almost in unison. You expect the whole nightmarish, ummm…nightmare to spill forth as one and strip the flesh from your bones. [shudder]
Thought I was kidding about the big hairy spiders, didn’t ya?
We have black widow spiders around here, and I find them fascinating and oh so easy to kill. One morning, years ago, I got in my car and a black widow was smack dab in the middle of my windshield. An unusual place for one, since they tend to hide. I sat there and looked at its underbelly, with the red hourglass and all, and then noticed the thing had teeth. And it was opening and closing its mouth, like that thing in Aliens. So I got out of the car, took off my shoe, and smashed the little bastard.
Which just shows to go ya, spiders are better than snakes because you can’t kill a snake with your shoe, unless it eats you first then chokes on it.
Generally, when it comes to spiders I have the jeepers-creepers. (Getting bit by a Black Widow at age 10 didn’t help, I suppose).
In my humble opinion, the City of Colorado Springs has only on option: It needs to nuke the entire site from orbit. Its the only way to be sure.
Thanks for the link, Steve. Much appreciated.
Dooownn came the raainnnn and…
TO: Stephen Green
RE: Sakes
Tranatulas are cool. It’s the shiny black buttons with the cute little red hour-glass on their navel that you need to stomp, or rather RAID.
I saw more black widows in C Springs than I ever saw big Ts.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
P.S. Then there are those funny snakes with their baby rattle tails…..
We get the occasional tarantula migrations down in Texas. Creepy as hell, all those hairy legs skittering about.
Now, I’m a bit of an arachnophobe, but not so much of one that I can’t use the wandering buggers to get in some good pitching wedge practice. I’m told those legs grow back…
maybe the tarantulas will eat the black widows? blech…the BW’s are the main reason I’ll be happy to move from CO Springs. Never saw one in my life until we moved here. Brown recluses in Kansas weren’t too cool either I guess.
Jeez, you guys are such wusses.
I like snakes and spiders. Tarantulas are cute, and their venom isn’t that venomous.
what the heck is a “mosquito hawk”? It’s obviously not a bird (it really would suck to have a hawk in your room), but I have never heard of the thing.
and smashed the little bastard
Don’t you mean bitch?
Steve has spidey sense!
Leave the spiders alone; they eat bugs.
Andrew X: I don’t care if the tarantula is furry I agree with Stephen – the beast shall die in a horrid, painful, yet very quick manner – after I get out from under my desk.
I hate spiders, especially big, furry, venemous ones.
jcr: translate as “dragonfly.”
Couldn’t resist this obscurity in the interest of verbal economy:
“the sacred Spider No Come Here No More dance”
is the TARANTELLA. Performed by “victims” of the relatively innocuous bite of the tarantula to ward off the venomous effects.
Frankly I’m saddened you need to kill it. Muslim terrorists? Sure, but spiders are just doing their job.
It wouldn’t kill you to scoop it up and turf it over the back fence, it’s a relativly large, living animal and it’s not dangerous to humans.
Sorry, peeps, tarantulas are not venomous. You could look it up. Saw about 100-150 of them in an old hangar at Laredo AFB after the hangar had been sprayed. Most were dead or very lethargic. The TX natives in my pilot training class handled them without hesitation.
Spiders eat all those other creepy-crawlies.
Speaking of tarantulas, I offer my tarantuala story.
I was on a trip to the Big Bend National Park in Texas. We had just arrived and everyone was kinda stoked about roughing it in the desert and all. We were exploring our surroundings when someone called out that there was a tarantuala on the outside of the bathrooms. This drew several people withint earshot including myself like a magnet to see for ourselves.
There we were not 5 feet from it in a little group oohing and ahhing and getting a big kick out of being that close to one. One guy even went so far as to creep closer to get an even better look. Then one of the chaperones, an expert in the region walked by and let us know very non-chalantly that “oh a tarantuala! Did you know that they can jump six feet in any direction??”
As a group every last one of us launched ourselves several feet backwards and peeled out of there like our asses were on fire
I am never getting near one ever again. I don’t care if someone swears up and down that they can’t jump six feet. It makes no difference to me.
I’m sorry, I don’t care if they are harmless they give me the heebie-jeebies.
Spiders and bugs all freak me out, but, I’m only afraid of three kinds of snakes…live snakes, dead snakes and sticks that look like snakes.
When I was in high-school in Ojai in southern California I saw a tarantula. Stomped it flat. I probably shouldn’t have, since they are apparently harmless, but I honestly don’t think the conscious part of my brain was involved. The neural impulse went straight from my lower brain to my foot.
Perhaps we as Americans should be asking ourselves – what have we done to make the spiders hate us so?
As pointed out above, it’s the smaller spiders (black widow, brown recluse) you need to worry about.
Also, the only snake in the U.S. that you really, really don’t want to be envenomated by is the Mojave rattler, which IIRC is in far west TX (Guadalupes) and so. AZ. There’s no anti-venom, unlike other poisonous snakes. As long as you’re a few hours from a hospital, other rattler bites will most likely not be fatal. However, if you’re more than a few hours, or you go into shock, or the rattler gives you a big dose of venom…
The preceding is not medical advise and may not be completely accurate. Check with your local ranger.
TO: peggy
RE: War….er….Spider Stories
So this one young soldier in my infantry company’s supply section, caught himself a big T down-range at Carson. Was keeping it in an empty C-ration box in the company 2 1/2Ton supply truck, which he was the driver for.
So the other guys in the supply section decided to have some ‘fun’ with himi.
One day, while the driver was off getting his lunch, they stole up to the truck, took the box and let the spider go. Then they put the box back into the truck with the lid slightly ajar.
The driver comes back to discover the empty box.
After that he refused to drive the truck, thinking the spider was lurking about in it, ready to drop on his leg or bite him in the a–/back/neck/hand.
We had to have someone else drive the truck for a day or two. But it was the talk of the batt for at least a year….until the scout platoon leader drove his track off a cliff, in the dark, while yammering on the company push about being chased by an OPFOR tank; “HERNANDEZ!!!! NOOOOOOOOooooooo……crump”
Regards,
Chuck(le)
P.S. The scout platoon leader and the members of his crew were okay.
It was a small cliff, only about 10 feet. And they hit a tree near the base, which acted as a ramp, moving them smoothly onto the level ground below.
The tank, which had been in ‘hot pursuit’ mode, did not fare as well….
…drove the barrel into the ground.
If you want it dead, get a .22 revolver and some snake shot.
No more needs be said, does it?
Black widows don’t scare me, I’ve obliterated whole infestations without ever noticing a bite. We have rather large wolf spiders around here (subtropical west Georgia) but they seem rather inoffensive.
First time we discovered one, it had apparently crawled out of our just-delivered chair, attracting our cat’s attention but when I looked it didn’t look spider-like to me (I guess it was in the spider-equivalent of the fetal position to keep from being eaten by the cat). Anyway, I kind of kicked it away from my feet and thought no more of it, but I left the room, and then heard my arachnophobic wife shriek when she watched it unravel itself into spider configuration. That spider died as soon as I got back into the room, but I don’t think I’ve killed any of the others I’ve seen.
Far more interesting are the scorpions. We don’t see many, and until recently none were alive that we’ve seen, but last week one, about an inch-and-a-half long, came scuttling out onto the bathroom floor from somewhere. Smashed it, disposed of it, haven’t mentioned it to the wife. She knows they’re related to spiders.
Black widows don’t scare me,…
Make that: “Black widows don’t scare me anymore,…”
Jeez, what a bunch of pussies.
Why couldn’t you wait till friday to tell me this? I just got into Colorado Springs on bussiness, staying out by the airport on the south side of town.
Two insects I’m not happy with are mosquitoes and ticks. The first for the historical reasons as well as currently CA leads the nation in West Nile Virus. The second because they’re small, I spend 5-10 hours hiking or MTBing per week, and they carry Lyme disease.
This is guaranteed to scare many people for at least two reasons.
Dan: south side of town, huh? Mmmm, sounds dangerous to me. Have not seen it mentioned here yet, but it’s well known that in addition to the spiders (and drought, and floods, and constant danger of Indian raids) that Colorado Springs is the world’s fatal-meteor-strike capitol. You can’t hardly turn your TV on around here for fear of learning that yet another unfortunate soul has been decapitated by a flaming chunk of volcanic rock plummeting from the sky. Astronomers have no explanation for this, but they note that the south side of town, particularly the vicinity of the airport, is by far the most at risk from this phenomenon. So be careful, Dan, and enjoy your stay, but for gosh sakes don’t even think about moving here. It’s just way too risky.
I say anything you don’t understand, kill it.
If you want to see me drive into a tree, tell me there’s a spider on my neck.
TO: All
RE: clyde & Spiders
“Jeez, what a bunch of pussies.” — clyde
Clyde must be a black widow handler.
And I mean “handler”.
He’s some kinda ‘man’. Not sure what sort, but some sort.
Regards,
Chuck(le)