So
there we were, miles into the Meramec wilderness and still an hour out from
camp. I was bringing up the rear of our tiny expedition while my old friend
Todd had the lead, our two ten-year old daughters sandwiched between. We had
just explored the entrance to a nearby cave and were trying to make it back to
our tents before a drizzle became rain. Suddenly, the boisterous singing that
had punctuated the journey so far changed to a shriek.
“Spider! It’s a giant spider!”
Sure enough, in the middle of the trail scrambled
the largest, hairiest spider any of us had ever seen outside of a zoo.
“It’s a tarantula!”
“No way!”
“Tarantulas don’t live in Missouri, do they?”
We discussed the size of the creature and took some
pictures as it escaped. Soon it disappeared into the brush and we returned to
the trail, paying a little more attention to where we stepped. The only other
wildlife we saw—perhaps unsurprisingly, considering our singing—was a startled
armadillo and a few insects back at camp.
A light sleeper even in the best conditions, I was
never able to completely fall asleep on the forest ground, and I admit to
checking the tent for relatives of the huge arachnid more than once. At dawn we
crawled out of our tents and started packing things up, the girls eager for hot
chocolate and some last minute exploration. Soon we were trekking out of the
woods; a half hour later we were back on the highway heading home, the giant spider
now a curious segment of a larger, more relaxed memory.
A few miles out of St. Louis Todd texted me a
picture of a Texas Brown Tarantula, also known as an Oklahoma tarantula, or, in
our case the Missouri Tarantula. Sure enough, this spider, by far the largest
in the state, is indigenous to the region and loves to hang out exactly where
we found it, along rocky forest glades. (Apparently Missouri was once much
warmer and drier than it is now, which is likely when this guy’s ancestors
crawled into the place. This species still finds the southern portion of the
state hospitable enough to thrive, but the Missouri River has kept the tarantula
from migrating into the northern counties. In case you’re wondering.)
So that was that. The spider wasn’t at all
aggressive, nor interested in hanging out with us at all, but it did provide us
with a shaky video and a very precise memory.
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