I dropped my car keys . . .

[Faulkner]

I got out of my car with a handful of stuff and was walking across the courthouse lawn when I dropped my keys on the ground. When I bent over to pick them up I noticed something move and yanked my hand back up. Turns out it was only a tarantula. I bent back down to let the little fellow climb up in my hand but after checking me it out it decided to move on.

I suspect it's looking for a place to burrow up before the expected frost in a few days.

 

[lihpster]

Another episode of The Wildlife Files with Deputy Faulkner! Saturdays at 8! Sponsored by Adams Ribs and Catfish out on Hwy. 6!

 

[SmithNut]

The only thing I'd consider touching that thing with would be a 2" x 4" ....

Wow, pretty scary, never would consider getting anywhere close to one.....

Yeaouuuuu!

 

[lihpster]

I've let worse looking things crawl all over me. Some of them were human.

 

[Baxter6551]

Heck no ….. NO WAY !!!!!

 

[Puller]

I don't do big spiders well.

 

[Onomea]

Faulkner, if, in the future at some point, you drop your keys into a river of molten lava, just let 'em go, man. They're gone...

 

[DWalt]

They are generally harmless, i.e., not aggressive and hostile. When I lived just outside Fort Worth, they were inhabiting our back yard in some numbers. There was a small stream running through it, and I imagine they liked being near water. I don't remember any of them ever getting into our house. But sometimes scorpions did, which is another story. We just left the tarantulas alone. After awhile, my wife came to terms with them. In west Texas I have seen some tarantulas about the size of my hand, unlike the smaller ones in our back yard.

 

[Faulkner]

Faulkner, if, in the future at some point, you drop your keys into a river of molten lava, just let 'em go, man. They're gone...

LOL, I nearly spewed my drink on the screen reading this one. ^^

 

[SMSgt]

I shot that spider only ten times because I ran out of ammo.

 

[handejector]

They are generally harmless, i.e., not aggressive and hostile.

Heel stomp- EXECUTE!!
Now, it is harmless, and not aggressive or hostile.


I had no clue you guys had those in Arkansas. Are they native?

 

[fiasconva]

ONLY a tarantula??? I ain't touching that sucker with a ten foot pole. I wouldn't do it any harm and would leave it alone in a heartbeat. YEESH!

 

[DWalt]

They may be good to have around the yard, as they probably feed on fleas, ticks, ants, and other undesirable bugs.
What Do Tarantulas Eat? 23 Foods They Consume - AZ Animals

 

[Faulkner]

Heel stomp- EXECUTE!!
Now, it is harmless, and not aggressive or hostile.


I had no clue you guys had those in Arkansas. Are they native?

Yes they are native, but we usually see them out and about more this time of year because they are looking for a place to den up for the winter, you know, kind of like black bears.

 

[Farmer17]

We camped out last weekend in Eastern OK with a large group of people and saw several Tarantulas. They are very common and I've never been too concerned with them but about the time we went to sleep in the tent a lightning storm started and when lightning flashed my girlfriend saw a huge spider on the mesh window! We thought it was inside the tent but then realized it was outside on the mesh, just starting to weave a web. It looked like a Black Widow but with thicker legs and it was about the size of a Tarantuala but wasn't hairy. I knocked it off the mesh from the inside with my shoe and the next day I Googled pictures of all the spiders in the Southwest and didn't see any that were like it. With Halloween approaching it made for a pretty creepy night!

 

[Rustyt1953]

Ruthie handles all the spider identification...

 

[Old cop]

I've been retired since '97 & for some reason never took the handcuff key off my keyring.

 

[Chuck24]

I don't like spiders and snakes……..

 

[Ivan the Butcher]

I've been retired since '97 & for some reason never took the handcuff key off my keyring.

My F-I-L is 80 and his wife 64 and they've both been retired for many years and have a cuff key on every key ring!


I noticed the cuff key, then studied the Kwick-set house key before I studied the spider!

Ivan

 

[Faulkner]

I've been retired since '97 & for some reason never took the handcuff key off my keyring.

Yep, I get it.

 

[DWalt]

When I was a kid on Ohio, we often had big black and yellow garden spiders that would build webs in the yard shrubbery. I always thought they were very scary and could kill you with their bite. Turns out they are also harmless and non-aggressive toward anything not caught in their web. I don't remember seeing any of those in Texas.

 

[snowman]

Deputy Faulkner,

You don't seem to have realized that the tarantula wanted to steal your car.

Andy

 

[Bro. Dave]

Hey DWalt, we have those garden spiders here around Stephenville. My sons used to love catching grasshoppers to throw into the webs so they could watch the spider run down the web, bite the grasshopper, then wrap it up in web for future dining. I believe they are Argiope aurantia.

 

[old bear]

Look at it this way. dropping your keys is Much better than dropping the Soap

 

[wundudnee]

One of my first jobs was working nights in a wholesale fruit and vegetable warehouse. We would spend the night loading trucks for delivery that day. Then in the morning we would unload box cars of stock to replenish the warehouse. Every Saturday morning we would get two semi loads of stocks of bananas. They were about three foot long stalks and green enough to hammer nails. We would put a rope on each stock and hang them in a ripening room. Lots of small frogs, bugs and tarantulas would end up on the floor.

After the ripening time they would be taken to a large lazy Susan to be cut into hands and placed in shipping cartons. There would be three to four women working the lazy Susan. They were always finding tarantulas while cutting the bananas. They had a wire cage there and they would just catch and cage the spiders. They would give them to schools for science classes.

It didn't seem to bother those ladies at all to handle them, but I was still a little leery.

 

[DWalt]

One of my first jobs was working nights in a wholesale fruit and vegetable warehouse. We would spend the night loading trucks for delivery that day. Then in the morning we would unload box cars of stock to replenish the warehouse. Every Saturday morning we would get two semi loads of stocks of bananas. They were about three foot long stalks and green enough to hammer nails. We would put a rope on each stock and hang them in a ripening room. Lots of small frogs, bugs and tarantulas would end up on the floor.

After the ripening time they would be taken to a large lazy Susan to be cut into hands and placed in shipping cartons. There would be three to four women working the lazy Susan. They were always finding tarantulas while cutting the bananas. They had a wire cage there and they would just catch and cage the spiders. They would give them to schools for science classes.

It didn't seem to bother those ladies at all to handle them, but I was still a little leery.

Rember the old Harry Belafonte song "Day-O" about the "Deadly black tarantula" hiding in the beautiful bunch of ripe bananas?

 

[wundudnee]

Rember the old Harry Belafonte song "Day-O" about the "Deadly black tarantula" hiding in the beautiful bunch of ripe bananas?

We would sometimes sing that song as a parody of what we were doing. At that time we were making less money unloading the trucks than the stevedores unloading the boats.

 

[Fullmetaljacket]

You have tarantulas in Arkansas? Cool.

 

[Grayfox]

I never did understand the fear of spiders or any other insect for that matter. They don't bother me at all. In fact, they're often beneficial to have around. They can crawl on me and at most I might just brush them off. But never saw an urgent need to kill them.

My wife OTOH was scared plumb to death of spiders. The mere sight of one would send her running and screaming!

 

[pharmer]

We used to have "Banana Spiders" around these parts. Very colorful and over 6 inches across with a narrower body. I had one on the back of my screen porch almost 40 years ago. Lived there from March until November. In it's old age I would capture and fling a cricket up in the web every few days. Haven't seen one (nor a rattlesnake) in probably 30 years. Joe