tarantulas

Its about time I told you all about the tarantulas in our house.  They have started to invade it.  As you may know, the house is infested with geckos that hide in walls and wake you up at night with their cleek-cleek-cleek sounds.  We don't often think of arachnids (spiders, ticks, tarantulas, scorpions,  etc.) as things that would eat lizards, but the relative size of these tarantulas and geckos puts the eight legged freaks solidly in the "predator" category.

A couple of nights ago,  my friend and I walk into our house to find another volunteer in a standoff with a cornered tarantula.  It had hidden itself in a cupboard, and attempts to flush it out with bleach had been to no avail.  But with three of us now in the house, we figured we had it outnumbered, although it still had more legs than all of us.  Using a combination of brooms, headlamps, and loud yells(Which were a little too high pitched to be war-cries)  we drove the enemy from his position and swept him out the open door.

The next night there was another one. 

We now have a game called tarantula hockey that we play in our house.  Its really easy to play.  All you need is a live tarantula, brooms, and a bunch of guys in bare feet.  The goal is the sweep the hairy thing through the door.  I'm the current high score holder. 

After the last game one of the other volunteers told us how last year he woke up in the middle of the night to find a tarantula sitting on his chest.  He came to no harm, but he achieved his optimal heart rate in about two seconds.  Remember how I said that the geckos wake you up at night?  Well, they don't anymore, because I never fall asleep.