"When kittehs earn their keep" or "Tarantulas in the bedroom"

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Sometime between 11:30 and midnight last night, Mrs. WeHaveCookies was drifting into a deep sleep and I was starting to nod off while watching Curse of the Black Pearl.

Our cats could be heard rummaging around the house during what sounded like a normal nightly romp. The youngest started to get on my nerves by repeatedly pouncing on a noisy Old Navy bag full of new shorts that was sitting on the floor about 2 feet from the headboard. Usually a sharp blast of air through my teeth is all that is needed to communicate that the cats need to be doing something else, but this time it wasn’t working. I figured we had another frog in the house, so I turned on the bedside lamp, shooed all of the dogs and cats out of the room, and lifted up the bag to find…one of these.

The before/during/after dialog with the Mrs. went something like this:

Me: [turning on the light and cussing out the cats]
Her: [mumbling] "whammmf?’
Me: “The cats cornered something under my nightstand.”
Her: [mumbling] “whammmf?”
Me: [after first thinking it was a mouse] “Its…the biggest fucking spider I’ve ever seen.”
Her: [sitting up and leaning over with a vague look of fear] “Where? How big?”
Me: [holding my index fingers and thumbs together in the size and shape of a artichoke leaf]
Her: [leaning over a bit more to peek] “Where?”
Her: [standing on the bed screaming and strangling a pillow] “Oh my god! Oh my god! Oh my god! GET IT OUT!!!”

I chased it into an empty shoebox with the a cat litter scoop, and it was fast as hell! I am not usually squeamish at all about critters, but I actually recoiled instinctively once I slammed the lid shut. Somewhere in the tangle of my neurons I determined that at that speed, there was just as much of a chance of it running up my arm as into the box.

I did not stop to take pictures, and proceeded out the front door and out into the woods, where the shoebox still sits this morning.

We have a pretty big gap (an inch or two) between the porch and our threshold that is exposed if we have just the screen door closed. So far it has introduced 3 or 4 frogs, one fat toad, one salamander, and now a tarantula into our domicile, all of which the cats have greatly enjoyed tormenting until I rescue them and take them back outside. When we were still in Georgia, there was a sizable snake that stowed away in our camping gear that the cats clued us in about as well.

I have a feeling I’ll be covering that gap up with something soon, if I know what is good for me, and I think it is time to bust open a can of tuna for the Fuzzybutt Guard.

2

Crosses California off the list of places safe to visit

3

Was it this: http://biology.clc.uc.edu/fankhauser/Animals/Spiders/Wolf_Spider_8_eyes_PB032198.JPG ?
Tarantulas are usually pretty slow.

4

number nine on my list of “Why I like cats.”

5

Who cares? Whatever it was, it’s creepy.

Robin

6

Seconded. Trantulas are pretty pokey and their venom is about like a bee sting. If that thing was moving at speed you need to be a lot more careful with it, and I would not suggest releasing it outside.

7

I’ll take spiders over Roaches** ANY DAY**!

8

Squee! Kittens!

:smiley:

9

No it wasn’t one of those. It looked extremely like the California tarantula pic that I linked to. As for the speed, it had been chased by cats all the way through the house by the time I nudged it into the box. Do they always maintain their mellow disposition? I observed it move across the distance of a foot, and it seemed pretty fast, but that isn’t much of a sample to go by.

10

We have tarantulas in California? * In the Bay Area*?

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek!

11

!!

This sentence alone made me have to leave the room.

Oy.

12

At least frogs don’t bite. (okay, I have no idea if tarantulas bite. If one got close enough to me I’d be on the ceiling).

At the camp I work at occassionally, there were a few years someone brought up a pet tarantula. Okay, the thing was in a cage, I could deal with it. Except one of the little girls wanted to pet it. Fine, hon, you pet it, I’ll be WAY over here (it was one of the ‘camp brats’ - a kid who’d grown up at camp and was usually there the whole summer. She’s a good kid).

Now we just have a shed skin. GROSS.

That was the only critter I had problems with. Snakes? Cool. Feeding snakes? Ultra-cool. Lizards the kids had caught? Awesome, but I’m letting them go in a few days (using the glove. They were usually pretty calm, but I didn’t really want to take the chance). Bunnies, feeder mice, salamanders? All cool. Tarantula? No freaking way.

I also brought up stinging nettle every week for the orientation and had no problem with that either. I don’t like bugs.

13

Now I’m bummed that I didn’t keep it in the box to get a closer look in daylight. The pic I link to is of a “California Ebony Tarantula”, but from what I’m reading they’re more common in Southern California. Also, the abdomen was smaller than most of the ebony pics I’ve seen so far, more like a brown. I have yet to find any good cites on distribution of specific species across California, and good pictures for comparison to my memory seem to be lacking in general.

It was definitely fuzzy, and my first thought was “tarantula of some kind”, but spiders were not my focus back when I was a Zoology major (I was more into mammals). The color seemed to me to be predominantly a dusty grey/beige with hints of brown. The brown pics I’ve seen are undeniably brown, but the abdomen size is closer. The ebonys seem too dark and their abdomen size too big.

ETA: We live way up in the Santa Cruz mountains, in a very rural area. In case that makes any of you Bay Area urban/suburbanites feel any better. :wink:

14

Also, the best approximation of size that I can give is that when it was huddled with all of its legs tight against its body, it was just a wee bit smaller than the size of 2 AA batteries. With the legs extended, the span was easily 2 and a half inches long by 2 inches wide.

15

Oh. A baby! Much better. :rolleyes:

Lucky you! My uncle lived in the Santa Cruz mountains for years. The last mile to his house was a terrible, pitted rutted dirt road. He lived in a house he built himself with a wood-burning stove and old-fashioned gas lamps he had converted into electric. And a swimming pool with a mermaid at the bottom. I loved going there.

16

how big a spider can a kitten safely tackle?

17

Full grown

18

AHHHHHHH! :eek:
I usually don’t mind spider pics, even though I am getting over a fear of them, but this was one HUGE, and I totally didn’t expect it to take up the screen like that!
Most uncool!

19

Anybody ever watch Andrew Zimmern, on “Bizarre Foods” eat the fried tarantula? He broke off the legs like French Fries, then cracked open the body and sucked out the insides. Yum!

20

Smaller abdomens generall mean male spiders, and going by your description and the first pic you posted it sounds like a rose-hair that was getting ready to molt. (Not sure if they are native to your area, though.)

Thank you from the bottom of my creepy-crawlie-lovin’ heart for turning it loose without harming it.