Spidah!

[furtech]

On return from dogwalk, I go out to take the trash cans down to the curb...and what do I spy? This handsome feller! (Spiders outside are handsome/lovely creatures unless they're crawling on our faces because we just walked into a giant web...)



There's a quarter there for size ref. Here's a larger pic for those interested


He's another male tarantula, similar to the one who tried to crawl into my back door a few years ago. Sodden and miserable, he was crawling on the wall next to the garbage cans. I'm a little surprised to see one out this late in the mating season. I felt a male-geeky kind of sympathy ("I feel yer pain, buddy!) and scooted him into a handy bug container. After a few pictures, I dropped him off on the south-facing hillside in my yard where he'll probably have better luck than his fellow geeks.

Oh, and after I did spider-duty, I found a live bee on my kitchen floor (around midnight). Very odd.

Comments

[farallon.livejournal.com]

The male and female Tarantulas around here have huge asses and are very furry. It's so hairless looking (though maybe becuase it's soaked?) and has such a small abdomen it me think it might be a Trapdoor or Funnelweb spider. We have both and they can get pretty big. Though that thing is huge, so who knows...

[farallon.livejournal.com]

Ew! I just found this pic of a "Hairless Tarantula" WOnder if that might be it? http://www.nps.gov/pinn/images/spiders/hairless.jpg

[furtech.livejournal.com]

In Roz's "Insects of the Los Angeles Basin" (Hogue--one of the finest reference sources I've ever seen), we identified it as a male (American) wolf spider, which is dark, hairless and a variety of tarantula. Females usually hang out in their trap-door lairs on south-facing hillsides (which my yard has an over-abundance of it turns out).

The first one I'd seen was crawling on the outside wall of my house, right toward the open back door I was standing in (talking on the phone). Imagine my surprise when glanced up and saw him...I'm sure he thought he'd found the Mother-of-all-Trapdoor-beauties.

[martes.livejournal.com]

I think you mean a male trap-door spider. The wolf spiders (not to be confused with the wolf eels) are smaller and brown.

[furtech.livejournal.com]

Could be...you've got the book! Hey, here's a cool site:

http://www.rochedalss.eq.edu.au/spiderphotos01.htm

For ID'ing spiders.