Going Shopping at the Tile Store

I post so often about the beautiful parts of southern New Mexico, it's only fair that I also show you some of our creatures with another kind of beauty. We don't want the place to be over run with people, after all. To go along with the recently-featured mantid (see Pray or Prey) and the centipede (Bite the Toes?), I bring you this little fellow.

We ran into him the other day while we were down at the tile store picking out floor tiles for the living room and the study (a very exciting upcoming project). As we crossed the sidewalk this customer came wandering down the pathway.


I'm sorry now that I didn't include anything in the photos to give you an idea of scale. Let's just say that he was big enough so that we could keep an eye on him from inside the store, and that we could still see him strolling off across the parking lot when we drove away later. He was five to six inches across, and controlled all of his many legs with awesome concentration and grace.

Hello! Is this the way in?

Maybe this is it...

Darned door has to be here somewhere!

I will post some before and after photos of the living room and the study, as the new tile floors get underway. I am very excited for a number of reasons, some of which will be obvious when you see the "before" pix!

The big, big spider and the brave red shoes

I was chased by a very large and (understandably) very aggressive spider on my way to Tucumcari yesterday. It is the time of year when male tarantulas go wandering about in search of mates. The females stay close to home, so the males must go off looking for them, and if a road is in the way the tarantulas march right across.

There is something pretty impressive about a spider of such size that you can see it from a car going 65 miles per hour. We saw seven along the road during our 190 mile round trip, but that was only once we started really looking for them. We pulled over and backed up to get some photos of one fellow who was still out in the middle of the road when we first passed him. My sister stood guard and encouraged him to get to safety before any oncoming traffic reached the spot. He liked her; I know he did. At one point he reached up gently to touch her shoe.


On the other hand, I don't think he liked me or my blue shoes very much. I was maneuvering around, trying to set up the best shot, moving along with the big guy and attempting to keep him in focus. I glanced up over my shoulder to be sure that there weren't any cars coming in my lane, and that's when he snapped. When I looked back down at him he was coming fast, amazingly fast, right at me. My sister says that he reared up in a very threatening fashion, but by that time I was long gone. I apparently screamed, having lost all sense of decorum and delighting my sister who declares that she has never heard such a loud sound out of my librarian self.

Here is another shot of him, probably pawing at the ground and getting ready for another charge.












Go to Desert USA for information, photos, and a short movie about tarantulas in the Southwest: http://www.desertusa.com/july96/du_taran.html.
To see a short video of a tarantula from the Clovis News Journal, go to http://www.cnjonline.com/video/grady_23132___video.html/spiders_tarantulas.html