MORE ADORABLE MONSTERS

There are tarantulas living on nearby Mt. Diablo, and in September and October, the males leave their subterranean haunts in search of booty. And not the pirate treasure kind. Since they’re moving around above ground during daylight hours, you can go and find them. So yesterday, I realized it was September, called the park ranger station to ask if the spiders were active, called up Shawn and hit the road. Apparently the best time to find them on the roads is around sunset, so we had to wait around the park for a while (which is beautiful, need to go back and hike). Around sunset, it seemed like we drove every road in the park three times, slowing to inspect every rock and piece of coyote crap, but we finally found our hairy legged friends along North Gate Rd.

As you can see I was little less comfortable letting these guys crawl all over me than Shawn, but they were completely docile. Apparently their bite hurts about as much as a bee sting, so there was nothing to fear, and I think you’d have to seriously squeeze one to piss it off enough to bite. Really, they were all cute and fuzzy. If you actually got one mad, it stuck up its fore-legs and abdomen, or started scraping some of the hairs on its abdomen onto its legs (the hairs are supposed to cause some skin irritation, but I guess I didn’t touch any).

I know these guys are in the genus Aphonopelma, but I haven’t figured out what species lives on Mt. Diablo. California really needs a comprehensive field guide to the state’s arachnids.