Posted on 06/30/2019 2:04:43 AM PDT by Windflier
Giant Tarantulas Are Invading Texas By The Thousands This Summer
Everything is bigger in Texas – even the bugs. While it’s no secret that summer brings lots of critters out of the woodwork here in the hot, humid Lone Star State, the eight-legged variety will be especially populous. It’s mating season for the Texas Brown Tarantula, a large arachnid that lays up to 1,000 eggs at a time. C’mon, we know you want to see:
Over 1200 different species of tarantula can be found all across earth's Southern Hemisphere. Named after the Southern Italian town of Taranto, the somewhat ambiguous term describes any large, unfamiliar ground-dwelling spider.
Everything is bigger in Texas - including the spiders. The Texas Brown Tarantula is one of the largest varieties, with adults weighing up to three ounces and boasting leg spans of over four inches.
This summer, the tarantulas will be most highly concentrated in North Texas. While nothing to worry about health and safety wise, keeping your eyes peeled during outdoor adventures might keep any unpleasant surprises at bay!
That 2nd pic has to be a photoshop. I’ve never seen one that big, except for that picture.
I remember seeing that at the movie theater when I was a kid!! Went to the theater to see “Them” as well. It was great growing up in the 50’s!!
Forgot to throw in “The Deadly Mantis” too!
From Mark Twain’s “Roughing It”:
“The surveyors brought back more tarantulas with them, and so we had quite a menagerie arranged along the shelves of the room. Some of these spiders could straddle over a common saucer with their hairy, muscular legs, and when their feelings were hurt, or their dignity offended, they were the wickedest-looking desperadoes the animal world can furnish.
If their glass prison-houses were touched ever so lightly they were up and spoiling for a fight in a minute. Starchy?—proud? Indeed, they would take up a straw and pick their teeth like a member of Congress.
There was as usual a furious “zephyr” blowing the first night of the brigade’s return, and about midnight the roof of an adjoining stable blew off, and a corner of it came crashing through the side of our ranch. There was a simultaneous awakening, and a tumultuous muster of the brigade in the dark, and a general tumbling and sprawling over each other in the narrow aisle between the bedrows.
In the midst of the turmoil, Bob H—— sprung up out of a sound sleep, and knocked down a shelf with his head. Instantly he shouted:
“Turn out, boys—the tarantulas is loose!”
No warning ever sounded so dreadful. Nobody tried, any longer, to leave the room, lest he might step on a tarantula. Every man groped for a trunk or a bed, and jumped on it. Then followed the strangest silence—a silence of grisly suspense it was, too—waiting, expectancy, fear. It was as dark as pitch, and one had to imagine the spectacle of those fourteen scant-clad men roosting gingerly on trunks and beds, for not a thing could be seen. Then came occasional little interruptions of the silence, and one could recognize a man and tell his locality by his voice, or locate any other sound a sufferer made by his gropings or changes of position. The occasional voices were not given to much speaking—you simply heard a gentle ejaculation of “Ow!” followed by a solid thump, and you knew the gentleman had felt a hairy blanket or something touch his bare skin and had skipped from a bed to the floor. Another silence. Presently you would hear a gasping voice say:
“Su—su—something’s crawling up the back of my neck!”
Every now and then you could hear a little subdued scramble and a sorrowful “O Lord!” and then you knew that somebody was getting away from something he took for a tarantula, and not losing any time about it, either. Directly a voice in the corner rang out wild and clear:
“I’ve got him! I’ve got him!” [Pause, and probable change of circumstances.] “No, he’s got me! Oh, ain’t they never going to fetch a lantern!”
The lantern came at that moment, in the hands of Mrs. O’Flannigan, whose anxiety to know the amount of damage done by the assaulting roof had not prevented her waiting a judicious interval, after getting out of bed and lighting up, to see if the wind was done, now, up stairs, or had a larger contract.
The landscape presented when the lantern flashed into the room was picturesque, and might have been funny to some people, but was not to us. Although we were perched so strangely upon boxes, trunks and beds, and so strangely attired, too, we were too earnestly distressed and too genuinely miserable to see any fun about it, and there was not the semblance of a smile anywhere visible.
I know I am not capable of suffering more than I did during those few minutes of suspense in the dark, surrounded by those creeping, bloody-minded tarantulas. I had skipped from bed to bed and from box to box in a cold agony, and every time I touched anything that was furzy I fancied I felt the fangs. I had rather go to war than live that episode over again.
Nobody was hurt. The man who thought a tarantula had “got him” was mistaken—only a crack in a box had caught his finger. Not one of those escaped tarantulas was ever seen again. There were ten or twelve of them. We took candles and hunted the place high and low for them, but with no success. Did we go back to bed then? We did nothing of the kind. Money could not have persuaded us to do it. We sat up the rest of the night playing cribbage and keeping a sharp lookout for the enemy.”
I always wanted to be sleeping with a bunch of people, and in the middle of the night, grab their attention by yelling “Turn out boys . . .” That phrase is guaranteed to get ANYBODY’s attention.
Giant Gila monster and how bout THEM!
The Blob with unknown Steve McQueen.
Good thing they had Clint Eastwood to take that sucker out!
You caught me out.
The other movie that bothered me was the 1959 movie "The Tingler" with Vincent Price. Saw that at the local theater with my brother. It was crazy when The Tingler had escaped its box, and ended up in the theater in the movie. William Castle liked to pull stunts like that during the premieres, but they only did it in big movie houses, not the local "slip and slide" as we used to call our local theater.
My brother and I went to see the 1959 movie "House on Haunted Hill", with our mother at the now demolished RKO Palace in downtown Rochester, New York. That was another William Castle movie, and in the dungeon scene, where the skeleton rises from the vat of acid, and approaches Price's philandering wife, the theater turned up the lights, and from the right side of the curtains, came a skeleton on a wire that traveled across the theater, and disappeared somewhere off to the left.
I remember the skeleton rising out of the curtains and traveling. As I recall, it elicited laughter.
The childhood movie that rattled me for years was 1950s “Strangler of the Swamp.” As an adult, I rented the DVD and watched it again. What a cheesy mess.
The Tingler, in some theaters, had the seats wired to deliver a tingling sensation when it was relevant. Lots of folks freaked out.
Those WERE the good old days. I feel so lucky that I was born in ‘47, and had the opportunity to live in the 50’s. Great memories.
They glow in retrospect. But at the time fears of polio and nuclear annihilation were real.
I remember air raid drills in the 50's at my grammar school. We all had to leave our classrooms and sit in the hallway. We never knew if it was just a drill, or the real thing, and would sit there waiting to hear the drone of airplanes overhead.
We had the early polio vaccines. If I recall correctly, there were three shots, the last being the booster shot. They were given intramuscularly via a stainless steel syringe at the doctor's office. Because it was live serum, our arms ached terribly for hours afterwards, and it became hard for us to even lift our arms without pain. It would eventually wear off, but having to go through it three different times is something I've never forgotten.
I don’t remember any pain from the Salk vaccine BUT I surely remember the PAIN when Willis G__________ turned loose a fruit-jar full of hornets in the school bus on the way back from the clinic, where we all got the polio shots, to the school. = OUCH.
(Willis was NOT popular for a LONG time thereafter.)
Yours, TMN78247
Mark Twain really was one helluva storyteller. That little excerpt had me hooked from start to finish. Thanks for posting it.
LOL!! on the jar full of hornets! We didn’t have school buses in my day. And we didn’t have a car, so we walked or took the city bus to go downtown.
Fwiw, I was in middle school then & the ISD had to have buses, as my hometown was “a wide place in the road” in a rural Northeast Texas county of less than 3,000 people.
(2/3 of the county’s students rode the bus, as it was too far to walk for most students.)
My “grade school GF” (SUSIE) got stung so many times on the bus that her eyes swelled SHUT from the hornet stings. = I got stung a few times trying to beat them off of Susie.
(NOT a fun day for anyone.)
Btw, we have some counties here that have LESS than 100 residents, total. = I was once a Deputy Sheriff in a LARGE (in area) county with about 400 residents.
Yours, TMN78247
I worked as a Correction Officer, and then Sergeant in New York State's Department of Correctional Services. Retired in 2003.
FYI, I lived about 12 miles from the county’s only school.
Also, I’m retired from the US Army & was a special DoD investigator & IG investigator for much of my career.
yours, tex
Wow! For a small lad who came from such humble beginnings, you’ve sure had a full, and obviously successful career. Thank you for your service...all of it. My two uncles were U.S. Army during WWII. My only brother joined the U.S. Army, and served in Vietnam ‘66-67.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.