Krag Collectors Association Forum

How about this fella....when we get a good rain they come on out... they are not aggressive, and I pick them up etc....they will calmly crawl on you.

A Cutie! Better looking and cuddlier than Nancy Pelosi.

Boy Howdy....

The tarantula looks like he has been on a diet? A fellow at camp carried one around inside his hat for the week. Many let him crawl on their arms. So they do have a fairly gentle disposition. A camp counselor held him upside down and showed us his fangs by pulling them into view with a pencil. He agitated it for a second to demonstrate the power of those fangs and he broke the end of the pencil off. For those that do not know, the fangs on a medium size tarantula are about 1/2 long.

Earlier mention of the Africanized bees, yeah the queen can be replaced if you recognize the colony ahead of an incident. The problem comes when an unknown nest is disturbed while operating a power tool. They will chase you for hundreds of yards. Many reports of individuals being stung hundreds of times.

Fred, that is a male T...the females are blond and fatter/thicker...many keep the 'blond T's ' as pets...they won't bite..... my pitbull has some big choppers too but is very friendly.

True about the hives.

Floridians have come up with a plan to help Texas control the border along the Rio Grande.

A convoy of SUVs, transporting nuisance Gators, is in route from Florida to southern Texas to provide backup for the Border Patrol!

It is interesting to see what others in different places deal with. We have several creatures around here that can inflict terribly painful stings. Two are similar in appearance and size, the tarantula killer and cicada killer wasps. enormous wasps/hornets. They are solitary so no big nests, you will have to provoke them to get stung, but the sting has been described as so painful that it will cause you to roll around on the ground screaming and wishing you were dead. Another one you see is a wingless wasp, looks like a huge ant, its stinger is said to be as long as its body about 1/2 to 3/4 of an inch. Never known of anyone being stung by the critters.
Another one that I have run into on 3 occasions is the puss caterpillar. Fuzzy oval shaped ball of fuzz that I have never seen move. They just cling to a branch. Brushing against them causes intense almost instant pain that just keeps increasing for an hour or so and is accompanied by paralysis of whatever limb contacted them. The paralysis will last for a couple of hours.

I just glanced at a Field and Stream article about a mass migration of snakes in the midwest. The migration is protected by limiting traffic on certain roads. Three of the snakes were venomous. a cotton mouth and a copper head and the timber rattler. The rattler in the photo did not have the familiar black bands near the tail, would certainly be harder for me to recognize. Now that gives me the willies.

Fred,
I was stung in the face by a Tarantula wasp about 5 years ago.... it was under a matt in one of our stalls and then the horse came in to be fed out 'it' came with a serious grouch on.
All I remember seeing was this huge black thing before I got whacked under my left eye/cheek. Strangely I did not feel that kind of pain but my face got swollen in a just a minute...huge...had to have steroid treatment. I looked like Quasimodo. I am not allergic to stings btw.
We see them now and again around our pool...but they just go about their business if not messed with.

Just ran into a snattlerake at sunset a few minutes ago. Did not have the snake slayer or even a pocketknife with me. I had to do with a couple of rocks and a blood weed stalk to it in. It was just a couple of feet long.

Same snake a couple hours later with the thermal thingy. Cannot prove that it will detect a sbnake. I was hoping the snake would show up as slightly hotter than the soil. Insects do but it is still a maybe that the thermal will see a snake.