The picturesque Texas Hill Country is full of pleasant surprises. Take this abnormally tiny $20 bill, for example. I sure did!
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I love how Savage Death Island tries to protect its capital. The only thing better would be if the tarantula and a centipede were fighting a la King Kong and the dinosaur.
Since I have 1-2 comments left before the window of appropriate commenting closes. As I was driving this morning I kept thinking about this picture. Specifically, hoping that the random hill country fluttering Andy Jack is not representative of a No Country for Old Men style drug cartel shootout massacre, and also hoping that if Jill finds a weird suitcase full of money, to check it first for a creepy homing device and beware mop-topped killing machines.
Some of my best childhood friends were tarantellas, or tarantulas, I forget which.
There you are, down on your tarantula luck, face-down on the ground in a drunken spider stupor, and someone comes along and rolls you for your last twenty.
Exactly, B, exactly. And where will the money be spent? Blow, or a latte.
shaking and crying with hysterical tears and laughter
bless you BDL and PP, and JP
If I’d put that $20 down there to demonstrate the gargantuan size of that spider, I’d have used one of those six-foot-long reaching aids they sell for short people. Yikes.
I’m going to try that trick with my giant cat and the toaster oven.
CUTE! Reminds me of the pet spider I had as a kid. Her name was Sebastian and she learnt to very gently take moths from my fingers. She lived for 5 years – I had no idea they lived that long.
That is one gorgeous spider!
Nigel: “What’s a tarantula gonna do with a twenty-dollar bill?”
Ooo, what a gorgeous tarantula! Is that a Texas Brown?
@Morticia — female tarantulas can live 10-30 years, depending on the species. It’s the males that have the really short lifespans, about only 6 months to 3 years. (And that’s even if they escape being eaten by the female after mating.)
Dang, I wish we had money-bearing tarantulas here in Denver! I feel deprived.
I want to know the $20’s story. How did it end up in the middle of Savage Death Island being nursed back to health by a tarantula with a heart of gold? There’s a movie there, and a lesson for all us ladies, I’m sure.
Aww. Silky fur like a baby kitty.
I am so glad I don’t live in Texas. I can’t even go near the kind of tiny little innocent non-biting spiders that live with me here in Canada. If I had that big furry creature anywhere in my area, I would never sleep. I am about to move to Toronto with no money and the idea of starving without a job is not as bad as the idea of having bedbugs or cockroaches in my building.
I screamed when a tiny little jumping spider crawled across my mailbox door as I was opening it yesterday. A tarantula would be enough to make me leave that $20 on the ground.
I can’t believe I forgot about this, but we joke at my place about spider money based in this hilarious exchange, but that is real live spider money!
Not me; I’d get that $20. How? I do not know for sure; I must theorize. It seems unacceptably cruel for me to capture a bug to lure the spider away. Who am I to decide how any particular bug ought to fulfill his or her destiny? But I might get a stick and put a wee bit of double-sided sticky tape on the end, then I’d sing the itsy-bitsy spider song until the spider is nodding along and tapping its feet, then I swoop in and sticky stick the $20, and then the next round’s on me. Woo and hoo.
Hmm. Have I considered the possibility of arachnoidistic vengeance? Okay, so maybe I could replace the $20 with Monopoly money. Are the other tarantulas really going to pitch a fit?
To add to the Science mood around here. A group at UCSF this week published the mechanism by which a particular tarantula venom works. It binds to your capsaicin (hot pepper) and temperature activated receptor, and irreversibly turns it on. Thus it makes you feel like you are burning, or that your mouth is on fire, if it happens to inject your tongue. I don’t think it also provides celery or blue cheese.