No to tarantulas

The Press reports:

Betsy, Rose, Marvin, Gingy, Flicky and Borris: they may not sound like fitting names for eight-legged creepy-crawlies, but that is what Orana Wildlife Park staff have decided to name their latest additions.

For the first time, the park is now home to six sub-adult tarantulas.

Originally from England, the six spiders were passed on to the park last week by the Wellington Zoo. Head keeper of native fauna Alyssa Salton said the tarantulas were “settling in nicely”.

Yuck. They’d better not escape, or there will be hell to pay. Hopefully they are sterilisied and can not breed.

I do not like spiders or snakes. Unlike one of my friends who has the most incredible spider phobia (she will flee a room even from a daddy long legs – one day I should blog the story of how I conned her into watching the Return of the King, by denying there were any spiders in it), I just have a normally healthy dislike of them on the basis they can kill me.

It is one of the things I like about NZ – we have no animals that are killers. I mean sure piss a bull off, and it can be fatal. But no snakes, no particularly venomous spiders (yeah I know we have red backs but when did someone die from a bite last?), no lions, no tigers etc. We have a pretty safe country.

Now I know zoos have lions also, and they could also escape. But if a lion escapes the reality is it will be caught pretty quickly. But if those mofo tarantulas escape, I’ll be crossing Christchurch off my lists of places to visit unless they capture them all.