Each autumn in this sprawling, flat corner of southeastern Colorado, thousands upon thousands of creatures are on the move — some on eight legs, some on two.
“I love tarantulas and I wanted these guys to see them in the wild,” he said. “I’ll look for snakes when the sun goes down.” At their worst, they can kick off small hairs that can irritate the skin — researchers call it getting “haired.” Earlier this month, she and several other researchers and volunteers fanned out across a stretch of prairie near the town of Lamar, 55 miles east of La Junta.
Bauer was thrilled. Growing up, her friends called her Terri Tarantula because of her infatuation with the fanged, eight-eyed arachnid. At 18, she got a tarantula tattoo on her foot.Female brown tarantulas typically live about 30 years and never move more than a few inches from their burrows. Males have much shorter lives. Around age 10, they venture out during the fall in search of mates.
And that’s the other reason the researchers were visiting — to persuade the state to install tarantula tunnels, probably about a foot wide, to keep the spiders safe from traffic. “We’ll see what we catch on camera, get some preliminary data and work out the kinks,” said Lorna McCallister, the research manager at Butterfly Pavilion.
“It was a case of taking lemons and making lemonade,” said Pamela Denahy, the town’s director of tourism and events.
Scientists, nature enthusiasts and that rare subspecies of humanity obsessed with spiders all come to witness something remarkable: hordes of fuzzy, fist-sized male tarantulas emerging from their burrows to scour the prairie for mates.