Are large tarantulas in the kitchen really that common place where you live? I live in New York City. All we have running around the house is an occasional mouse and a few roaches.
They are reasonably common in many places out there that are basically desert. As are scorpions. I would be shocked by one here mid-Atlantic, but still not sure it should make FOX news!
Every year, the male tarantulas get to wandering around, sometimes in large groups, looking for the gals who hole up in the ground individually. A male will knock on her door to see if she wants to have some bug fun. Afterwards he runs, so he doesn’t get eaten. They eat mice, pack rats (not really rats), water bugs (aka roaches when they get inside the house) and baby rattlers among other things.
We get them on our driveway and our front steps, sometimes on the exterior walls hunting daddylonglegs and sometimes marching across the patio. We skoot them along with a large piece of cardboard. They can move pretty fast when they want to.
They are usually followed by the orange-bellied wasps, that fly close to the ground and low-level recon for tarantula holes. They paralyze-sting and then lay eggs on the tarantula and/or egg casing inside. I’ll leave it to your imagination what happens to the tarantula.