One night, late at night, I found yucky ANTS in the bathroom. After this discovery, a quest was in order to find the source, and called upon teddy to aid in this venture. I thought the ants were coming from under the sink, but woe and alack, what was under the sink instead was a tarantula!!!
After much wailing and gnashing of teeth on my part (I have a medium-sized case of arachnophobia, and let's face it, who wants to find a spider that big under their bathroom sink?), and a much greater patience on the part of everyone else in the house, teddy captured the tarantula and put it in a giant-sized pickle jar. After considering the options of squishing a creature the size of a small mouse, or letting a spider that size loose within the same state in which I live, I instead decided to maintain the spider in a tank, where it could get fed and watered and live and have absolutely no chance of biting anyone.
This spider was found wild, and checking the standard field guides reveals no reference to any spider like it. The color on the abdomen seems to vary from brown to black with time; the factors relating to this variance have not been isolated. The thorax is black, and the legs have very short hairs.
Behaviourally, the spider hunts crickets placed in the tank, and likes to hide in a toilet-paper tube or other enclosure. Web spinning is almost nonexistant, but sometimes it spins webs to hold moss or bark in place in the tank. It molts approximately twice a year.
The spider is shown above and left perched on a toilet-paper tube, just to give you an idea of its size. It has not been sexed. If you have any idea if this really is a tarantula, or if not, what species it is, I would like to know.
Photos courtesy of Dave Vangerov and Karine Perttula
