Jasper County Democrat, Volume 2, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 August 1899 — THE TARANTULA HAWK. [ARTICLE]

THE TARANTULA HAWK.

A Wasp that Preys on the Dangeronj Tarantula. “Low down on the Rio Grande River,” said a man from Texas, “where the sands are heated almost red-hot with the sun, there grow the biggest centipedes, the biggest rattlesnakes and biggest tarantulas in the world. If you can look at one of these tarantulas when he is pinned fast to a board with the naturalist’s thin steel pin, and you are sure that he 18 good and dead and cannot spring at you and shoot his poison into you, he forms an Interesting subject to study. They are horriblelooking hairy things, with eight legs and eight eyes. Their colors are dark brown and black. The female tarantula is said to be a fickle spouse and to have a summary way, all her own, of getting rid of her consort when sbe is tired of him. . She woos and weds all right, assumes the entire care and support of the young family. The first matrimonial jar she has she turns to and kills her husband. Not content with killing him, she eats him. “The female is the larger and stronger of the two; they are simply gigantic for spiders. I have seen those that measured six inches between the stretch of tbeir legs. They are the terror of man and beast. But there is one little animal of the insect family that wicked Mrs. Tarantula stands in as much dread of as man stands in dread of her, and that is a big wasp that in Texas is known by the name of the tarantula hawk. The tarantula hawk has an exceedingly bad opinion of the tarantula. It will fly around over the head of the tarantula, make a lightning-like dive down, get a good clutch of the monster spider, fly away home with him, then all the tarantula hawk family sit down to sup. "The tarantula hawk will not hurt men. On the contrary, it is a blessing, and ybu never hear of a Western man harming one of them. It is said that these Rio Grande cattle rangers are indebted for the tarantula hawk to an old New England professor, who. while down In that country in pursuit of his studies as a naturalist, was stung by one of these monster spiders and nearly died, and would certainly have died had it not been for the whisky flask of his guide. In that country where rattlesnakes, tarantulas and centipedes are so big and plentiful, no rancher leaves his house without his whisky flask. Shortly after the old professor left that part of the country the rancher received a small box of these tarantula hawks, with instructions what to do with thejn. He turned the big wasph loose, they increased and multiplied, and now they are holding their own against their enemy, the tarantula.”— New York Sun.