Amidst scrub and thorn, pale gold tarantulas
rest, molt in silk-carpeted desert
burrows.
Four dainty pairs of legs moved up my adobe
porch prowling for crickets,
paws padded like felt-coated piano pedals.
Venom readied.
I once held a tarantula bigger than my palm.
Docile, it walked up my arm,
shoulder, and head. Bianca wrapped a snake
around her neck on a beach in Sri Lanka.
My husband fed pet tarantulas with a leaf.
The bug jar had vents. Angular
legs meandered up his curved, cupped hands.
In Nogales, I bought a tarantula encased
in plastic. It sits on my desk
by the elephant teeth I brought home from
a safari in Zambia.
In rocky, dry rubble, a toad swallows
a tarantula, abdomen
first, then legs. The Blonde fights back,
fangs, stinging hairs strike
inside the throat. The toad retches;
tarantula springs out.
High in the Andes, researchers flip rocks,
tease out freshly molted
specimens, distant cousins of the Blonde,
spiderlings, moms
embracing puffy egg sacs ready to hatch.
After filming, returned to the soil.
Tarantulas are a culinary delicacy in Cambodia.
Deep fried in sugar, salt
and spices, they taste like soft-shelled crab
or shrimp. Millions fed
on them during the Khmer Rouge regime.
