Wow, Wolfie's a biggun!
I'm about to embark on a journey detailing how I captured this near four inch Wolf Spider. I named her Wolfie, and this isn't the first time I've seen her this month. I took some pictures of her nearly three weeks ago, and had my friends at Reddit.com help me identify her. She got away and left her hatched babies behind, so I took care of them with a little pot of boiling water. See the old pics here -- http://www.flickr.com/photos/kmartburrito/sets/72157622001623595/
Well, three weeks later, she's back with a new egg sac and a twinkle of revenge in her eyes.
I used a little bit of Hollywood ingenuity, had a laugh for my friends over at Reddit.com, and got Wolfie settled into her new home, while she cares for her babies.
In this first pic, Wolfie is crouching, ready to attack me as I let our dog Maya out to do her business. My wife Jenn nearly became Wolfie's first human dinner (that we know of) letting Maya back into the house. After her screams of terror subsided, I formulated my plan on how to capture her for good this time. I have a huge amount of respect for a spider that can grow to this size.
I've always been terrified and fascinated by spiders all at the same time. Along those lines, when I first saw the movie Arachnaphobia, I thought my skin would never stop crawling. I remember watching the "making of" special, in which they talked about how they made the spiders perform for them on screen - they used hairdryers. You see, spiders don't like hot air. They'll walk away from it on instinct, so with a little care, you can direct them about at will! I grabbed an empty can of honey roasted peanuts and a heat gun to try and make her drop into the can. It could either work perfectly, or she could get pissed off, jump on my face, and eat me alive. That's just the chance I was willing to take.
I put a little heat on her with the door wide open to the house, she slid down a couple of feet or so, and then let go of the screen. She dropped perfectly into the peanut can, and I promptly put the lid on. Now it was off to Walmart to find her a permanent (for now) home. Back from Walmart and you can see I decided upon a "Pet Carrier," how fitting.
But then it hit me. How could I fit a round peg into a square hole?
This is an exclusive present for my friends at Reddit.com, haha :D
As if straight out of the movie Apollo 13, I knew what I had to do. Time to put my MacGuyver skills to work. I knew dropping her into her new home would be a little difficult, so I aimed to make myself some more elbow room.
Almost ready to do the transfer. At least with my paper funnel, she won't be able to jump back up on me.
It wouldn't be nice of me to put Wolfie in her new home unfurnished!
Now she's ready to go, I've got the top of the peanut can off, and a thick pamphlet to keep her inside until I can pull it out from under her.
She's now inside her new home, time to pull out my MacGuyver and Apollo 13 inspired funnel and close up shop.
She's testing out her new furniture, and I'm not sure she's totally liking it yet, but in due time.
Wolfie is clearly trying to give me a kiss in this photo. You can see my Sprint Touch Pro to the right of her house, for a gauge of the pure size of her.
http://imgur.com/cifn5.jpg -- HiRes of the super macro shot I took, pretty nice! Copy and paste it into a browser window if you want to grab it for your desktop picture :)
Here's a super macro photo I took inches away from her. It's a pretty good picture of her, although it might not be her most photogenic side.
That's better! Say goodbye Wolfie!
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