Tarantula!

April 25, 2015


I’m all for bugs in the garden, even spiders, though I have an unreasonable fear of them. But in my coat and shoe closet? Early in the morning as I’m poking my bare foot in there to slip on shoes before driving my kid to school? Uh-uh!

After a minute of shrieking, however, and with help from my husband, who kindly scooped it out of the vicinity of my sandals and into a plastic container, I calmed down, and we released it along the property line in the back garden. It crawled through the fence and headed (I hope) back into the greenbelt.

I try not to think about how long it was meandering around in the house, nor how else it might have been discovered. Shudder!

So what sort of creepy-crawlies have you ever found in your house?

All material © 2006-2015 by Pam Penick for Digging. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

37 responses to “Tarantula!”

  1. Jeanne says:

    Holy cow! That would give me the heebie jeebies for days. Our worst so far was a mouse.

  2. ladyhawthorne says:

    Yikes! I hate spiders.
    My worst was the 6 ft rattlesnake coiled up on the welcome mat in front of the door last year. I wanted to use the shotgun but Dad chased it off with the pressure hose. I don’t mind snakes in general, but not venomous ones.

    • Pam/Digging says:

      I’m with you. Non-venomous snakes are actually kind of cool. We find them in our garden from time to time. But rattlesnakes? Just no. —Pam

  3. Cassandra says:

    Holy Cow a real tarantula! How neat. Sorry it scared you.

  4. Pam Duffy says:

    I wouldn’t sleep for weeks, wondering what else might be crawling around. I’m always on my dear husband about closing doors, especially into the garage. Spiders and the water bugs give me chills.

    • Pam/Digging says:

      I know you’re a Southerner, Pam, since you used the term “water bugs” for those massive tree roaches! Yes, those are awful too. —Pam

  5. Lisa at Greenbow says:

    Nothing as dramatic as your tarantula. I have had a mouse, spiders, crickets… You wouldn’t have trouble with any of these with a tarantula around. 🙂

  6. Shannon, ATX Gardener says:

    Scorpions give me the creeps. Even our dogs stay away from them basically pointing at us to “take care of that”. Glad you didn’t kill it though. *shuddering*

    • Pam/Digging says:

      Your dogs are smart. No, we wouldn’t have killed it. First of all, how? They are WAY too big to step on. Second, no, it’s just an interesting creature doing its thing. All I can say is, thank god it didn’t skitter or try to hide. It just calmly allowed itself to be bundled up into a Tupperware. —Pam

      • Shannon, ATX Gardener says:

        At least it wasn’t a boa like the commenter below. I would have moved too! We did have a 4 foot rat snake get caught in some deer netting and die. It smelled as bad as anything I’ve ever smelled. It was as long as the hoe I used to remove it.

  7. Jen Y says:

    Yikes Yikes Yikes! – I wouldn’t be able to turn the lights off for days. I have a very unreasonable fear of spiders as well. I keep sticky traps everywhere in my house to catch them – brown recluse are very common here. 🙁

    I also find scorpions in my house occasionally – believe it or not in northwest Arkansas, on the edge of the Ozark mtns & the beginning of the prairies. I was shocked to find out we had them when we moved here yrs ago…& yes, we have tarantulas as well but a sighting is very rare. I’ve only seen 2 or 3 in the wild here in 25 yrs.

    • Pam/Digging says:

      Brown recluses are bad news. You definitely have to be careful of those. My family are all from Oklahoma, and we used to see scorpions there when we were kids. A tarantula too once, although my cousin killed it, sadly. —Pam

  8. Yikes! I have a lot of respect for tarantulas and other spidery creatures, but I would not want to find one in my hall closet. Many years ago in Houston, I once stumbled upon a young yet sizable ball python coiled up on the floor in the kitchen of a duplex my ex and I were renting. After much excitement, we got our next-door neighbor and landlord to come over and take care of the situation. He’d owned snakes before, he explained, as he calmly lifted the snake up with a broom handle and deposited it into a 50-gallon trash can. Not a big deal, he reassured us. A few months later, we heard something banging at a window one morning, along with a great deal of madly chirping birds. We raised the blinds to find a second, much larger ball python dangling from the eaves of the roof, squirrel clasped in unhinged jaw. Needless to say, we broke the lease and moved a few weeks later!

    • Pam/Digging says:

      Your first two sentences sum up my feelings exactly, Caroline. But OMG, your ball python story! I’m sure you laugh over it now (can you?), but I imagine your feelings at the time were less than jolly. —Pam

  9. Kris P says:

    Yikes is right! Thus far, I haven’t found anything creepier than a centipede.

  10. Jeanne says:

    The other thing we get here are black widow spiders. I spotted one in the vent over our shed door. I had to have the Mr. get it. All I could think was how long was she there every time we went into the shed.

    • Pam/Digging says:

      As I kid I remember finding black widows tucked under the swimming pool cover weights. Shudder! I think I’d rather find a tarantula in my house than a black widow or brown recluse. —Pam

  11. Wendy Moore says:

    Ugh, I didn’t know we had Tarantulas in Austin! I have a plethora of gekkos/lizards that I love, and unfortunately the cat does too.

    • Pam/Digging says:

      Oh yes! We’ve found two since we moved into this house, Wendy: the one who liked my shoes and another one, dead, in the back garden. I assume they’re coming in from the greenbelt behind our house. I’ve also seen one at the Wildflower Center in southwest Austin. —Pam

  12. TexasDeb says:

    I bet it took a while for your pulse to return to normal after that! I used to freak out at the sight of scorpions. Years of dealing with them inside our house (and you do NOT want to know some of the places they’ve appeared!) has relieved me of that. Familiarity breeding, etc.

    I currently draw the line at venomous snakes, especially if they are too close to the house (and OK, tarantulas as well though the fact people keep them as pets has toned that fear down).

    Workers up on scaffolding putting in new windows a couple of years ago called out to ask me what I “wanted done” with a coral snake they’d spotted in leaf litter below. Once we determined it was moving away from the house, we simply let it keep on keeping on, though I made sure to alert neighbors with dogs and kids who play outside.

    • Pam/Digging says:

      I think it’s great that your workers didn’t automatically kill the coral snake but just alerted you to it. I understand they are not aggressive, not that you want it hanging out under your windows. —Pam

  13. Last year I was awakened from a sound sleep by three sharp pains – two in my hand, and one on my chest. One of Austin’s little brown scorpions had crawled into the crook of my arms and then panicked, apparently.

    First time being stung, so after we dealt with the scorpion (not so kindly as you did, I confess) I spent a nervous hour wondering how long it would take to be sure I wasn’t one of those unlucky people with an allergic reaction. Was my heart racing because I was reacting, or was I just thinking about reacting and making myself scared?

    I still get the jeebies thinking about it.

    • Pam/Digging says:

      I can see why! One’s bed should be a place of comfort and repose, not scorpion stings. My father-in-law has a story about being stung by a scorpion in his bed when he was a teenager. He scooped it up, tossed it in the toilet, poured lighter fluid on it, and set it on fire. I don’t know how he felt about scorpions in general, but clearly this one had crossed a line. —Pam

  14. Ginny says:

    I peacefully coexist with spiders, both inside & out. That being said – yee gads!!!! I would have been freaked out, too. Would not have been as kindly as your Mr. though… I think I would have smashed him flat!

    • Ginny says:

      Uh, smashed the spider, LOL, not the husband…

      • Pam/Digging says:

        I’m really not sure a spider this big could have been smashed flat, Ginny. At any rate, despite our horror of seeing it in the house, it was well behaved: calm, non-aggressive, and amenable to being captured. I think squashing it would have been more traumatic all the way around. —Pam

  15. Nancy says:

    Spiders don’t bother me very much but they do bother my husband. (I am the one to move them outside). I thought seeing a tarantula on the deck a couple years ago was very interesting and I enjoyed watching it. BUT, discovering a tarantula in my closet would be a whole different thing. No thank you! My worst discovery inside would have to be a scorpion. They send chills up my back no matter where I see them.

  16. What about her babies? She probably had all 100 of them corralled in a dark corner, in a shoe, or maybe under your bed. The children are probably getting worried because their mother has not returned and they are spreading out across your house to find her. No doubt, the mamma is in the greenbelt organizing a rescue party. She got in your house once, so she will be back with all of her eight-legged friends to rescue her precious children.

    Sleep well.