dirtlooter
Gold Member
- Joined
- Jun 5, 2014
- Messages
- 8,889
- Reaction score
- 13,499
- Golden Thread
- 0
- Location
- mid western ARK
- 🏆 Honorable Mentions:
- 3
- Detector(s) used
- XP Deus with 9"LF and 9" HF Coils and 600 Equinox with stock and 6" coils
- Primary Interest:
- Relic Hunting
- #1
Thread Owner
We, the little wife and I, were out in the woods yesterday as we hunted around for anything good. We had gotten separated as she headed up an old logging road. The next thing I know, she is walking back with a long branch, holding it off to the side. I can see something black at the bottom of the limb and realized that she had a tarantula on it. Now, this is the woman that freaks out majorly when the dead shell of a june bug is on her or near her. She almost had a melt down when a grand daddy longlegs was on her hair a week ago. But, twice she brings me a small foam coffee cup with a blackwidow in it for me to verify that it was in fact a blackwidow. She was extremely proud of herself as she held it out away from her leg. I asked if she had taken a picture of it but she had left her phone in the truck so I gave her mine. She took this picture and also a nice video of it crawling through the weeds and grass. We tried numerous times to down load the video but it would never do it, so it is what it is. This is the time of the year that the mature males go roaming in search of a mate, I call it the suicide walk as many get eaten sometimes before, sometimes after their moment of romance. We tend to see them walking everywhere, including across the roads. While they can be bad news for their prey, I have never been bitten by one. I had one in a fruit jar one time and placed a skink lizard in with it over night. The next morning, all that was left of the lizard was a tightly rolled up ball of skin about the size of a marble. Their venom breaks down everything and they wait and drink it like a power drink. As a kid, my cousin and I would turn over every board, rock or anything else as we gathered up everything that we could find. This usually included snakes, lizards, tarantulas, and scorpions, all in a couple of buckets. The scorpions were relieved of their stingers, their stings were pretty rough. Of course the doors to house were locked to keep us out (and our prizes). Eventually we would be forced to take them all out far away from the house and turned loose. Today, the kids play with electronics, no imagination! DL