Creepie crawlies

On July 30th at just before 10 pm I noticed something a little different climbing up our sliding door.

Yes, we have Tarantulas in the Ozarks. Thou this is not the typical time of the year to see them migrating to find mates.

That is usually in the spring time and early summer. But, Bob has had females laying eggs in his compost pile before or in the fall trying to keep warm at night. He thinks they are neat.... Personally ~ I never would have been able to take these pictures had that sheet of glass not been between us!

Here Baguierra is watching it crawl around. At least 4 of our black kitties were interested in this happening and watching very closely. We have witnessed them playing with and then eating these spiders in the past, but for some reason they just watched this one. Which made us wonder what was up?

We think that mystery was solved the next morning when we found it on our door mat like this. We believe it was a male that had mated recently with a female and she had mortally wounded him. So, somehow the cats knew that and really didn't want anything to do with a spider that was dieing. Smart Cats.

At the same time we saw the spider we had this little tree frog sound off really loud to let us know of his existence... Guess he didn't want to be one up-ed by the Tarantula?

The leaves you see are of my spider plant I have on a plant stand just outside the sliding door. That shows you just how tiny this little thing was. It is amazing how loud they are! The kids also have a tadpole pool set up. They are quiet right now and growing well... can't wait for them to mature and make all kinds of noise. Bet the kids won't like them so much when they are climbing on their windows at night singing up a storm!