We ended up finding two fairly large tarantulas! Leslie's dad, Merrill, was brave enough to catch one in a large plastic cup, and Morgan caught the other one in an ice cream bucket. We watched them while we ate dinner and got brave enough to touch their back legs while they were in the bucket.
Peter loved watching them! We had to make sure that he didn't reach in and smash them. Actually he did push on them a few times with his chicken nugget. Hopefully tarantulas are sanitary!? (You might want to scroll down and pause the music on our webpage before watching the videos.)
We showed them to a few other people and then decided to walk down a trail before letting them go. When we got to a good place we decided we were brave enough to dump them out onto someone's lap. Morgan and I sat down and Merrill got ready to let the tarantulas out. Peter decided to climb onto my lap, too. One tarantula ended up on him and started crawling up his shirt toward his face. Everyone screamed and we tried to pick Peter up and brush off the tarantula, but it crawled under Peter's armpit and onto his back. It was an Indiana Jones moment as we tried to get it brushed off him as quickly as we could. I only wish we got Leslie's face on the video (but you can hear her voice)! If you watch closely you can see the spider on Peter's back for a second. This video might be worth watching full screen (click on the YouTube logo at the bottom right of the video and then a new webpage will open up; then click on the icon of the four outward pointing arrows at the very bottom right of the video).
Finally we decided the tarantula wasn't too bad and we let him crawl on our hands and arms. Merrill was the first one brave enough to try it (besides Peter, of course). Then Morgan tried it and so did I (the tarantula crawled up my arm and onto my back, touching my neck for a minute - ahhh! - before it crawled down my other arm). We even got Leslie to try it for a minute!
We ended up having a lot of fun before we let him go. We hope we didn't traumatize the poor tarantula too much!
8 comments:
Oh, that's crazy! I can't believe you let it crawl on you Leslie! We think it's great that your kids aren't afraid of insects and arachnids and snakes and amphibians, and....
Grantham (an entomologist at OSU) says Oklahoma has just one kind of tarantula in the wild, which is commonly called the Oklahoma tarantula, though other states claim it, too. He's also preparing for the annual monarch butterfly migration, which should start at any time. So we'll be looking for your butterfly blog.
who knew??!?!?!? you crazy people.
You guys are NUTS! ;-)
hahaha oh wow! that was definitely exciting to watch! I love how Peter stays totally calm. :)
The best is when Morgan says Papa dump it on me!
Ahh!! I would have nightmares for months! I almost stepped on one on the road when we were there, and I couldn't ever run in the dark again! :)
You guys are super crazy... I love it!!!! I can't believe how fast that guy crawled over peter... that was freaky! It was great hearing Leslie screaming, I can totally hear Debbie doing the same thing, though she would probably wack me if I even contemplated the idea of letting it on my kids! Hope your trip to Quebec went well frere!
Hello King Family,
This is the Barrett family from our good old times in Provo. I thought of you today and decided to look you up. It looks like you guys are having a good time in Oklahoma. I can't believe how big your kids are. Wow. It sure is good to see what you guys are up to.
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