Not much of an outdoorsman, me, but once camping we saw one crossing the road. We stopped to let it cross. Even got out of the truck to check it out up close. Didn’t pick it up, though. This was in Arizona, Superstition Mountains IIRC.
Love the theory, but my observations are that the first thing the garden orb weavers do with a prey is churn out sheaths of silk to shroud the struggling critter before they bite. That is done with the hind legs guiding the output from the upturned abdomen spraying out the stuff from the spinnerets. I actually managed to photograph it once. When turning and wrapping the prey, spiders seem to use all legs in a very spidery sort of way, rather than front legs in a more human sort of way. They are actually extremely elegant in the way they move their angular legs. If you have no idea what I mean, then just empathise with my students!
Lynne
One of the most fascinating things I have seen tarantulas is when they go into attack mode. It is wonderfully scary to behold. They rise up on their back four legs and come rushing at their target (once a friend and me) waving their front four legs and making a phleming throat-clearing sound. If I hadn’t grown up with spiders as a youngster, I would have been terrified as my friend was who froze in place and whom I literally had to drag away.
Whenever I tell the story, there are people who say that spiders don’t rise up on their back legs and attack making weird noises, but fortunately enough people have come across the action that I have back up witnesses.
A friend of mine worked for a couple of years at a summer camp in Texas.
Someone found a tarantula on campus, and it was kept for a couple of days in an aerated jar in the staff room while they decided what should be done. Finally, the camp head, Maureen, demanded it be taken out of there, and soon.
So they took it to the outskirts of the camp area and let it go…
…then brought back the jar and left it on its side in the staff room with the lid lying haphazardly nearby.
Maureen wouldn’t go in the staff room for a week, despite being repeatedly told it was a joke. Cuz, you know, they might be joking about it being a joke.
We were hiking in Big Bend National Park (Texas) on the Window trail last month and ran across this guy.
During this hike (night time, wearing a headlamp) I kept seeing reflections that were blue and incandescent-ish. I thought the reflections were beetles - it wasn’t until I stopped and looked more closely that I realized all those reflections were spider eyes.
Do tarantulas spin webs? I know web tensile strength is enormous, but the weight of a tarantula seems a bit much!
You may have noticed that there is a pane of glass between Sean Connery and the spider. For shots where you see the spider actually on the skin, they used a stand-in. Apparently Connery is or was somewhat arachnophobic.
I think that some one should make fried tarantulas and serve it for Halloween! That’ll scare little kids…when they find one in their candy basket! :eek:
If your witch costume won’t scare people, your treats sure will.
I just had to watch some videos of people eating fried tarantulas: First Timers , and Fine Dining . I hope you aren’t squemish. 
I had similar phobias about tarantulas, until I visited The Victoria Bug Zoo. That was certainly eye opening. And the best part was you can handle the bugs. Very educational and I think it will really take your phobias away.
My wife was very nervous about holding the tarantula and a scorpion–but she was a trooper and really actually enjoyed it. The tarantula is very fragile actually and you have to be careful. I recall if you drop one, they will just die since they are totally a hydraulic system and once they have a broken leg, they can’t survive.
Here is the web site–if you are ever there, I would highly recommend a visit
I love the Bug Zoo! (But I can’t hold anything for another year – grrr.)
My mom surprised everyone by holding both the tarantula and scoripion. They seem to present creepy crawlies in a way that doesn’t distress people as normal.
What must survival be like in the wild? Especially if their little feet can’t grip well? Imagine, here’s Theresa Tarantula, walking along a canyon rim, and suddenly along comes a stiff gust of wind. Tumble 10 feet onto a rock, and next thing you know you’re reunited with Shelob in the afterlife. No wonder they make so many babies.
Many years ago while on a coral reef study with a naturalist from the Savannah Science museum, we camped on Big Pine Key. He showed us how to place the flashlight base against our forheads at night and get down and look into the brush at ground level. All around were little blue sparkles that you could then follow in on and see were the eyes of spiders - usually wolf spiders, I think. A great trick.
The American Barking Spider (Flatuus Deadliae) is mostly harmless, and serves as putative culprit for otherwise inexplicable eructations from the Nixon.
From my reading, it appears that Austrailian wildlife falls into two broad categories: animals that will kill you, and animals that will kill you and eat you.
They do have spinnerets, which means they’re capable of creating webbing, but they don’t really “spin webs” per se. They live in burrows or under rocks for the most part. The webbing they produce is more for stuff like spinning mats in their burrows or making egg sacs and the like.
I used to be completely arachnophobic until I finally decided to do something about it. Our local zoo does an arachnophobia workshop where they work up from pictures of spiders to shed skins eventually to the real thing. It was a fantastic experience and I finished up getting acquainted with Geri very briefly.
I don’t think it’s completely cured the phobia, but I can now be in a room with a spider and not completely freak out about it.
I just wanted to mention when I glanced at this thread this last time, I also noticed that the ad at the bottom of the thread was for a pest control service. Does SDMB do their commercials correctly or what?
Thanks so much for answering my question! 
I dunno, when I think Terminix, I think of my house being so infested with termites the wood’s visibly falling apart. If my house was that overrun with tarantulas, a la this movie, I’d probably just abandon house, rather that worry about phone calls.
When I was a kiddo, I was haunted by a movie called Tarantula. Not so much because of the giant spider that was attacking the town (cliche much?) but because of what the venom was doing to the townspeople, including one of the scientists brought in to find out what was happening. Their faces got soft and sagged, and it was so creepy that I almost ran from the theater. Leo G. Carroll, maybe, was the main guy, and his face looked like it was going to melt off normally, so he was perfectly cast for this role. Maybe I’ve got details wrong, but it wasn’t the tarantulas that were so horrid, it was that side effect. ewww