810 



THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



''iliP^Ie. 



FINE FAT TARANTULAS FOR SALE! 



Sammy, a volunteer helper, used to "jump the job" of hunting trapdoor 

 spiders to capture his favorite game, the big hairy fellows whose burrows 

 are often found near their relatives' clay tubes. Tarantulas are easily 

 caught, for they climb upward when a glass jar is inverted over them. 



now. Ordinarily a spade is only a spade, 

 but here it is more than a spade. It is the 

 magic key that unlocks the underground 

 caves where the trapdoor spiders are the 

 Forty Thieves, cunningly hidden in the 

 lidded silken casks that prove to be only 

 death traps under the clever attacks of the 

 Ali Baba parasites. 



To insert this magic key in the adobe 

 lock, I stand on it with both feet, balancing 

 as I work the handle to right and left, for- 

 ward and back, driving it full length into 

 the ground. Then T swing back with all my 

 weight, again and again if necessary, prying 

 up the mass of earth containing the nest. 



If the soil is crum- 

 bly enough, the mass 

 splits away on all sides, 

 freeing the nest — a 

 short tube of clay, 

 closed at the top with 

 a close-fitting hinged 

 trapdoor. This one has 

 broken in digging, 

 and we have drawn a 

 blank, for it is old 

 and empty. 



Here is number 

 two, and it is a fine, 

 strong tube. But I 

 have a hunch ; I will 

 lift the trapdoor with 

 the point of my knife. 

 Sure enough, it is a 

 mother with babies! 

 So I replant the nest. 

 Without the mother 

 to raise the lid for 

 them, they would re- 

 main imprisoned in 

 the nest, and it seems 

 wicked to let two or 

 three hundred baby 

 spiders die just to 

 feed a couple of black 

 widow layers, no mat- 

 ter how important 

 the objective. 



But we must not 

 stop to examine each 

 nest now. Every hour 

 of daylight is pre- 

 cious. So we dig fast 

 and pack the nests in 

 our apple boxes for a 

 more careful exami- 

 nation during the long 

 night hours when I 

 check them in and make a careful record 

 of each one. As you will understand later, 

 a substantial percentage of these nests will 

 reveal the cocoons of parasitic wasps and 

 (Uher worthwhile specimens or data. So the 

 checking in of a bunch of trapdoor spider 

 tubes is always an interesting gamble. 



And even the hard digging has provided 

 some real fun, particularly the daily demon- 

 strations of universal curiosity. Every day 

 cars have stopped on near-by roads while 

 the occupants watched us and wondered 

 what on earth we were doing. Sometimes 

 they conquered their curiosity and drove 

 on, but in most cases they just had to ask. 



