Last night at dusk, my dad drove my kids and I out into the desert to go looking for desert fauna (and to just have a nice drive). Shortly after dark, we noticed something in the road hopping straight at us – it was a big ole toad! My dad stopped and caught the toad and brought it over for the kids to see. On the way over, the toad tried to pee on my dad, which the kids thought was rather hilarious. Alex didn’t want to touch it but Ava “petted” it, professed her love for the toad, and made kissy faces at it. My dad then let the toad go and encouraged it to hop off the road. We’ve seen toads before but the kids still love it.
A little while later, my dad saw a tarantula. The kids have seen tarantulas before and both have pet one. The last time they were out, my dad asked Ava if she wanted to hold one and she said “next time.” She reminded us of the conversation and as we all hopped out of the truck (with camera in hand), she walked right up to my dad and let the tarantula crawl on her.
The feeling kind of surprised her so she was glad to get it back on my dad’s arm. I tried to snap a still of the tarantula on Ava but it was super delayed. So there we are, in the middle of the Sonoran desert after dark and my dad is trying to get his camera in the right picture mode with a tarantula perched upside down on his elbow.
I finally suggested that I just video it and I’ll try to capture any pictures. We ended up recording for a few minutes where we were talking to Ava about letting the tarantula walk on her again. At this time I decided to suck up my fear and touch the thing. It was so amazingly soft. I then wanted to really check it out so I got right down in the fuzzy male tarantula’s “face” for a good look. It was beautiful. At that point my lifelong fear of spiders abated and I ended up letting the tarantula walk across my hand.
My dad then squatted down and said “c’mere Ava” – she walked over and the tarantula walked into her hands as her hands were in my dads hand. The big ole fuzzy spider then crawled up onto Ava’s arms. It was a pretty fun fauna night in the desert.
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