Growing up in Arizona, we had them all of the time during the rainy season, you hardly see them anymore. We would play with them when we were kids.
We took my mother-in-law to a sort of science fair once; one of the presenters had handed her a tarantula and it was crawling all over her arm. I reminded the husband (who HATES spiders) of this the other day, and he said, ‘Mom was weird’.
I’ve been in AZ for almost 30 yrs and I’ve never seen one in my house or nearby. I grew up in SoCal in the high desert and never saw one there either. I’d pry have a heart attack if I did, my arachnophobia is that bad.
Arizona isn’t listed as one of the five states in the warning.