arachnid shoot

Way cool. I like spiders, so I guess I have arachnophilia...

I would LOVE to have a Giant Huntsman spider or two for a pet(s).

I remember a tarantula encounter from my (much) younger days when I was about 7 or 8.

It was right after a thundershower and we heard one of my neighborhood friend's little sister screamed like, well, a little girl...We all went running out to the street to see what was going on. There was a large tarantula just taking his time and walking down the middle of the street. Of course within seconds there was five or six of us there poking at the poor thing with sticks making it extend its front legs in defense.

My buddy's little sis had gone and told her mother. Within a few minutes all (four or five) of our fathers had shown up and ushered us all away from it a good distance...just to be safe. The fathers were about 15 or 20 feet away from the spider, discussing serious dad-like things like what to do with it. Suddenly, like it had a jet-pack, the tarantula leaped the best part of that 15' and landed right at the feet of all the dads standing in the street.

We laughed for years about everybody's father screaming like little girls and running away with fear in their eyes.

An older kid named Hank Harkey that lived down the street was an Eagle Scout and had some good "hands on" time with tarantulas. He let everybody know they were pretty much harmless to humans. He picked it up and carted it off in a shoebox. I'm sure that made all the dads feel even that much more ashamed of their actions.

I can remember long ago participating in a romantic dinner for two and thinking things were going pretty good until halfway though enlightening her with my heroic tales, she suddenly went blue then green then purple, flew up in the air screaming, ran on the spot for a few seconds, then resumed screaming and fled the room. Turns out a small spider had crawled up the wall behind me into her view, and she didn't like spiders.