Tarantula Sighting, Invasion, Capture, and Release

So, I come home from the gig this evening and find this beauty on the brick wall just outside of my front door.



The right edge of the pic is about four inches from my front door. I have an outer screen door, and the inner wooden one. Since it's summertime and quite pleasant out tonight, I had the inner door open - the back door too, so I get good flow of fresh air - well, about 90 minutes later I detect movement in the lower right corner of my vision (I'm sitting at my computer station watching an old Chuck Connors western). Guess who?



The plastic mat is the thing I roll my desk chair around on, and the leg is my music stand. It's over thirty feet from the front door to this point - on the opposite side of my desk from the door - so the little critter had to go all the way down the entrance hall, across the living room, and behind my desk to emerge at this point. Sneaky.

Well, I almost stepped on a tarantula getting out of the shower one morning (I posted about that here), and she scared me so bad I killed her double-indemnity dead... I've always felt bad about that. Tarantulas are great to have around, because they eat the real dangerous spiders we have out here, like Black Widows and the infamous Brown Recluse. So... I grabbed a shoe box, got a fork to prod her into the open with, and then released her on the back porch.



The back porch was evidently where she was headed anyway. Glad to help out. As the Nike box says, "Just Do It."

And, just because redheads make me insane...



That's one of the cutest redheads I've seen in quite a while. Even her eyebrows are red. That just slays me. Yeah, we've seen her before here. Awesome girl.