This is the first in a series on West Texas "Wildlife"
that I will be presenting in upcoming posts. It is a revision of an older
article.
About 1AM one night, my mother burst into my room. I
was, of course, fast asleep. I heard her say, in a hushed and hurried
whisper—that probably would have been a shriek if the kids were not
asleep—“Wake up! Wake up! I think there is a tarantula in my toilet!”
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| The Criminal |
This
doesn’t really happen to everyone!
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| The Scene of the Crime |
Like anyone would, I shot out of bed, half conscious, and rushed
into her bathroom.
As I am running, my mother is saying, “It is hanging right under
the rim of the bowl! I got up to go to the bathroom and it was just
hanging there! I could see its fuzzy legs! I turned away because I didn’t
believe it, but when I turned back, it was swimming around in there and heading
for the bottom. I stared at it for a few seconds in disbelief and it swam
down the hole! I could see the little ripples it was making when it was
swishing its legs around! But I’m afraid it might have climbed back up when I
went to get you!”
I had no idea if she was dreaming--or if I was, for that
matter--or if she had really seen something. By this point, however, I had
pretty much no choice but to take her word for it and go hunting.
Now, as I am the catcher and killer of all things creepy, crawly
and gross at my house, I vigilantly examined the inside of the toilet
bowl. Seeing nothing, I warily felt around the inside. Then I
checked completely around the outside of the bowl and the base of the
toilet. No sign of him. Then I thoroughly investigated behind the
commode, between it and the wall. I even probed the tiny space behind the
tank. Nothing. (Thank you.)
Then
I gingerly lifted the top of the tank off, fearing that it had somehow made its
way up in there. I checked under and around all the moving parts inside
the tank and once again, thankfully, found nothing.
In
the meantime, my mother is peering over my shoulder, but in a cowering tense
manner as if she would shoot backwards and explode in terror if there was even
a hint of black furriness anywhere.
I
was not putting up a brave front, either. I know all too well how
frightening, although harmless, these creatures can be. I was armed with
a flyswatter I had grabbed on the way to my mom's bathroom. I was poised
through this entire search to swat first and ask questions later!
You
may be thinking that Mom was just half-awake and dreaming, and, as I admitted
earlier, I did, too--at first. But my mother is a very logical,
no-nonsense kind of woman. And there was so much detail in her
description, I couldn’t help but believe she was telling the truth.
Further, we had had a very late night and she actually WASN’T asleep, so there
is no way she was dreaming. She is not someone who would make this all up just
for fun.
Having found nothing, I flushed the toilet a few times for good
measure. I gave my mother the “all clear” and she reluctantly allowed me
to head back to my bed. As I lay there thinking about the incident while
trying to fall back to sleep, some plausible explanations for there being a
tarantula in the house came to mind. As I considered these possibilities,
I became a firm believer in there actually having been a tarantula in the
toilet.
These are the arguments I presented to myself:
1. We lived in West Texas in the middle of the Upper
Chihuahuan Desert. Tarantulas, rattlesnakes, Black Widows, lizards,
scorpions, and various other "beasties" are very common here.
They are just a fact of life and occasionally get into homes and buildings.
2. It was spring. As soon as the weather starts to
warm up a bit, all the above-mentioned creatures start coming out of
hibernation. It is still somewhat cold at night, however, and these
critters seek warm places to maintain their body temperatures. Tarantulas
are basically nocturnal, but occasionally, you can see them sunning themselves
in the daytime. They love warm sand and concrete, as these hold their
heat well, even into the evening. Since they are primarily night-lovers,
my mother probably just startled the spider when she turned on the light.
3. It had rained a lot in the few days preceding all
this. Tarantulas love water and come out of their burrows to seek it once
they start waking up from hibernation. In fact, there are places in the
area where there are huge "tarantula migrations". When these
occur, huge "hordes" of hundreds or possibly thousands of tarantulas
cross the road to a new food, water or shelter source on the other side.
This is especially common when a field has just been plowed, or if there are
standing water puddles in it. Searching for water is another possible
reason there may have been a tarantula swimming around in the toilet bowl.
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| Flower Bed Under Bathroom Window Little white square is the cap for the sewer clean out |
4. We have many flower beds around our yard. The dirt
in them is very soft, mellow and well-aerated, which is perfect for animals to
dig into. We have lots of strange holes in the beds which we always
thought were places that squirrels had been burying their bounty and hadn’t
fully covered them up. But these “holes” are more like tiny caves, usually
near the bases of plants where it would be shady and cool during the heat of
the day, or warm and cozy during the chill of winter. They are about the
size of a two-year-old’s fist, which, interestingly, is about the same size as
a tarantula’s body. So, it slowly dawned on me that the holes could
possibly be tarantula burrows where they had spent the winter and recently dug
themselves out.
5. We had just had a plumber at our house a couple of days
earlier as our kitchen drains had backed up. The plumber had left the cap
off the sewer clean-out in our yard, which happens to be in a flower bed
directly under my mother’s bathroom window. It is also very near to a
couple of the strange “holes” I mentioned earlier. It is entirely
possible that the tarantula crawled out of its burrow and was drawn to the
sewer clean-out as it searched for water. It probably swam right down the
clean out and up into my mother’s toilet—a distance of about 15 feet.
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| Gray Tarantula Indoors |
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| Eye-to-eye with the monster |
So, to start with, you must catch them. How? Well, the
first thing you need to understand is that while they may be big, tarantulas do
NOT move slowly. They can walk, but mostly they jump and hop
around. And they can jump a long way if they want to, so you have to be
really quick to catch them. Imagine Speedy Gonzales the mouse after two
pots of coffee and five energy drinks, and you start to get an idea of how
these guys move. They’re FAST!
I explained to use a dustpan and the brush that goes with
it. You just catch it in this and then carry it outside. Simple
right? Ri-i-i-i-i-ight (she says sarcastically). Once you manage to
scoop the tarantula into the dustpan—which is much easier said than done—you
put the brush down on top of the spider to hold it in place. To catch it,
you can also put the brush down on top of the spider and gently guide it into
the dustpan. Once you get it into the dustpan, you will have to press
down fairly firmly with the brush to keep it there, or it will just jump out of
the pan. Press down firmly on it, but not so firmly as to squish the
spider--Major Royal EEEWWWW!
That’s the easy part.
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| Spider Catcher Kit |
The hard part comes in trying to get the spider outside without it
escaping. You have to keep holding it down and then get the outside door
open. Once you manage that, the screen door is easy to open with your
elbow. The hard part is to do all this while maintaining pressure on the
spider (but not enough to squish it) and not ever taking your eyes off it, or
it will be gone!
Once the critter is outside, you can just give it a toss out into
the yard, but it may just wander back in to your house. Your best bet is
to get it out into the street where you can finally let it jump off your
dustpan and scamper away.
At this point, the biggest problem is to get the spider to go the
right direction--away. I did this once and all went smoothly until I got
to this point. When I removed the brush, the spider jumped as
planned. I, however, suddenly found myself eye-to-eyes-to EYES with the
thing, which had landed on my chest! I screamed and jumped backwards,
which threw the terrified creature off. Again, it jumped, and this time
caught itself on my thigh! Oh, the HORROR! I was finally able to
push it off with the dustpan and I escaped -- scarred for life!
I really didn't want this to happen to my kids!
Actually, you must tip the dustpan down a little and forward and
then as you lift the brush, give it a little push forward and away from
yourself like you are serving the ball in a ping-pong game. This way, the
spider can only jump forward and away from you. If it still lands too
close for comfort, you can use the pan to give the critter a little push to
fling it farther away from yourself. If it tries to head back towards
your house, put the dust pan down to redirect it, or give it another little
push in the opposite direction. Then get out of the street!
My kids were completely freaked out--TERRIFIED is a more accurate
term--but assured me they could handle it if the situation arose.
Fortunately, the tarantula hasn’t made another appearance (that we
are aware of, anyway), but there could always be some lurking around
somewhere. Although knowing how to catch tarantulas is important for the
kids to know, they haven't needed to use the information yet. I hope it
never is needed, but this knowledge may come in handy for my girls one
day. Maybe it will even be something you are glad you know how to do
someday, too.
You just never know what might be lurking in your toilet
at one o'clock in the morning!
Happy
Hunting!
Angela
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