Predators I Have Known - Alan Dean Foster [53]
The afternoon was warm and cloudless. I was returning to the house from the study when I saw it. I paused for a couple of moments to monitor its progress, noting the flawless combination of grace and agility with which it was making its sure-footed way across the wide, dry, rocky expanse. On impulse, out of curiosity, and having nothing else to do for the immediate moment, I sat down deliberately in its path.
While I had spent a good deal of time around its kind previously, both in zoos and in the jungle, I had never before been so bold as to attempt to make physical contact. I figured the right moment had come. After all, the tarantula was on my property. Could I do less than extend a sociable greeting?
Encountering my fully extended left leg slightly above the knee, it paused. One hairy black leg, then a second, commenced to inspect this sudden obstacle. Would it go around? It would not. Maintaining the same measured pace, it proceeded to climb up my leg and over the top. Through the fabric of the jeans I was wearing, I could clearly feel its weight and its movements. Living as most of us do in temperate or cold climates, the insects and arachnids we happen upon are usually modest in size. We tend not to think of them as having much in the way of mass or weight. My visitor had both.
As the tarantula rappeled down the inside of my thigh, crossed a narrow strip of gravel, and started up my right leg, my wife drove up and parked nearby. Wishing to know what I was doing sitting out in the sun in the middle of the driveway, she exited the car and came around the front. Well, partway around the front. She halted as soon as she saw the multilegged dark shape that was in the process of traversing my right leg. Her tone was very deliberate.
“What . . . are . . . you . . . doing?”
I gestured at my new acquaintance. “Isn’t it beautiful?”
“No,” my wife snapped. “It’s not. Are you crazy? What if it bites you?”
“It won’t bite me.” I was very sure of myself.
“How do you know?”
“Because it’s already been over one leg, and it didn’t bite me.” I beckoned. “Come have a look.”
JoAnn started forward—in the direction of the front door. “Do whatever you want with it, but I don’t want that thing anywhere near the house.”
“Relax.” I smiled reassuringly. “It’s just crossing the driveway.” I gestured to my right. “In a couple of minutes, it’ll be up in the spruce bushes on the other side and you’ll never see it again.”
“Good!” The front door closed behind my wife.
I was tempted to find a way to prolong the dalliance, but I had no desire to unnecessarily tire my mellow caller or inhibit its migration. And besides, it was hot sitting in the sun. As soon as the tarantula had finished its transect of the author, I rose. Perhaps my shadow startled it. In any event, it picked up its pace noticeably. I watched until it did indeed disappear into the rocks and bushes that formed a wall on the far side of the driveway, whereupon I returned to my study and my work and thought no more of it.
The following afternoon, not long after lunch, the phone on my desk rang. The voice on the other end was immediately recognizable as well as uncharacteristically agitated.
“Get down here. Right now.”
JoAnn’s words alarmed me. “Why? What’s wrong?”
Her tone turned taut. “Your friend is in the house.”
“My . . . ?” It took a moment before realization dawned. “That’s impossible. With the air-conditioning on, everything’s closed up, and it’s too big to get under the screen doors.”
“Maybe it used the handle. It’s big enough for that.” My wife’s words were joking but her tone was not. “Get down here this minute and get that tarantula out of my house.”
“It won’t hurt you.” My guarantee fell on deaf ears. Or rather, on no ears. JoAnn had hung up.
The tarantula was in the kitchen, feeling its way methodically along the base of the cabinets, probing for suitable openings. Unlike other youthful visitors to our home, I knew it was looking