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September 06, 2005

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Yep, you guessed it, that's a real live tarantula crawling up my arm. One with a leg span of about 5 inches.

My uncle was cleaning out some brush from some of the trees on the property. As he finished and went back into the house he felt something crawling up from his shorts and under his shirt onto his back. As he reached around he realized that it was large and fuzzy. Immediately thinking it must have been some kind of small rodent, he brushed it off and onto the floor where he discovered what it really was. My aunt freaked and he put it into a jar and brought it over for me to play with. Yay!!, "Oh thank you so much." I said, with a slight amount of sarcasm.

Now I must say that, although I have had several tarantulas in my possession, in the past, and had once even allowed a black widow spider to crawl on my arm, I still don't like spiders at all, and they still freak me out. And, after looking underneath this arachnid, and noticing the huge fangs that she possessed, I was even more resilient about allowing her to crawl on me. But I did. All just for a few pictures.

Yes, I'm still struggling with whether or not I'm tougher than I am stupid.
But I must say, in defense of the tarantula, no matter how I treated the poor thing, she still never revealed her fangs or even gave any indication that she would use them. Don't worry, I never abused her.

The very next morning I took her outside, took a few more shots, and let her go back out into the brush.
 I do wish that I could have spent more time studying and photographing this amazing creature, but my love of life, for all creatures, was just a little stronger than my curiosity, and I just had to set her free.

Besides, she might have gotten out sometime in the middle of the night and eaten my house.

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