pitsnpotree's xanga site

Currently Reading The Long Home By Christian Wiman see related

My mammoth arachnid encounter made me curious about which spider is actually the largest in the world. I discoverd it's a tarantula called the Goliath Birdeater, Theraphosa leblondi. Despite its name, the Goliath Birdeater does not eat birds; it eats invertebrates such as crickets and mealworms, and also small vertebrates such as mice and lizards. Native to South America, these spiders can be as large as 12" in length.

You can see an approximately life size photograph of this huge spider here: http://www.wcsscience.com/biggest/actualsize.html 

Here are a couple photos from http://www.wcsscience.com/biggest/

OK, that's enough of my spider obssession. Promise!

For something completly unrelated, here's a poem:

An Explanation

I watched the shoulders

of my old dog roll

as he swam after branches.

I saw his eyes glow,

heard his steady chugging

breath as he churned

his way back to drop

glistening sticks

at my feet.

I longed to leave my body

among the wet limbs,

to plunge in

and be pulled along

by his wake. This is why

I came home and held you

so fiercely, why my fingers sought

out all the places you had been

wronged. And this is why

when my fingers found them they sang.

EEEEEWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!

One of the reasons I like going out to Walkerton is that I see all kinds of critters I don't get to see in Richmond. Yesterday I went down to the Well House to get the kayak and found quite a critter. If you don't like spiders you might want to skip this post!

I found a Huntsman Spider, one of the largest spiders in the world. It can grow up to 10". I think this one is about 8". It doesn't spin a web. It catches its prey by hunting for it, hence the name. Its legs are sort of hinged so it moves more like a crab than a spider. It has a painful bite, so I gave it a fairly wide berth. For a sense of the size of this thing, in a couple of the photos you can see a 4" x 4" beam. My skin is still crawling!!

I have really missed my Xanga time! I'm absolutely drowning in student papers. I collected portfolios in all three of my classes. Each porfolio has four papers times 75 students....I have to have them all read by May 7th. The good news is that after May 7th I'm free, free, free!