If you'll excuse us, we'd like to open this by speaking directly to tarantulas.
Hi tarantulas. How are you? Mostly good? Good. We've gotten to thinking about you, what with the seasonal opening of the Spider Pavilion at the Natural History Museum. You're big. You're hairy. You're often misunderstood. And what would Hollywood do without you? Any time a spider is needed for a scary scene, you're summoned from your trailer. It must make all the brown recluses chuckle something fierce.
But Spider Pavilion is about setting a lot of stories straight. Tarantulas aren't going to attack and eat Las Vegas any time soon, regardless of what the movies tell us, and other long-legged beasties are just busy spinning webs and hunting bugs and not, in any way, plotting to chase a horde of screaming humans into the hills.
The Pavilion is on through Monday, Nov. 7. During that time you'll be able to see their webs up-close -- neato -- and learn more about their various histories and factoids. None of the spiders scurrying around the pavilion are dangerous, the museum notes.
(Certainly some spiders should not be tarried with, and are dangerous, but that blockbusters paint them to be devouring monsters both tickles and frustrates the spider aficionado.)
An adult ticket to the Spider Pavilion is three bucks. If you go on Oct. 1, note there's a USC game, so traffic. That's all we need to type. Traffic. You can fill in the rest.
Serious traffic can be more stressful than handling a friendly, safe, non-bitey spider. So let's watch this interesting video and enjoy.
