As my readers know, I am not overly fond of spiders, but I DO admire their work. I have had a couple of bad experiences with spiders in the house, one of which I documented in this Blog.

We have a beautiful patio covered with a roof.  Around the patio runs a small hedge at a height of maybe 2 feet.

The other evening, I was out enjoying the beautiful evening. Twilight and early evening are just spectacular here. I know for a fact that the web was not there.

Early the next morning, I walked out on the patio and see this web. I took several pictures, but they do not seem to convey the sheer size of this overnight work.  The web is attached to the top of the hedge at the bottom and to the eave of the roof at the top.  That is a distance of about six feet. This ambitious little critter constructed the whole thing betweem about 8 PM in the evening and 6 AM in the morning. Figuring it not to last, I took the pictures, and in fact, by mid-day, it had disappeared. December and January in Costa Rica are very windy months, and between the constant movement of the hedge and the pressure of the wind, the web succumbed.

Oddly, I never did see the spider who created this web. After all the work and spinning a web that should have made for a nice home and steady food supply… she apparently abandoned in before daylight, or was hiding somewhere in the eaves.

Click on the photo the the right to see an enlarged version showing the detail.  Incredible!

Today, however, I went to the site because I could not remember if it was Utube or YouTube and I needed to send the URL to someone. By chance, the video below was on the home page. This has nothing to do with Costa Rica, but has everything to do with a great and lucky amateur video.

Filmed by a bunch of tourists, maybe in Africa, it is an incredible video featuring a herd of water buffalo, a pride of lions and one very unexpected visitor. Watch it!

Click here to view the embedded video.

As spiders meet the more-than-four leg requirement above, they fall into the “keep them the hell away from me” category.

Maria Luisa, my bride of almost two years, does not have these issues. She thinks spiders are neat, and in fact all bugs are just wonderful. This, as you may imagine, sometimes brings conflict into our relationship. I prefer the “squash ‘em now” approach, while she would invite them to dinner and prepare something special. I am not permitted to hit them with a shoe or she has told me she will hit ME with a shoe. This applies even when we are visited by humongous tarantulas the size of a baseball glove. (Click to enlarge photos)

Those of you who are parents know the various shouts and screams of your own kids. Parents can almost always tell a whiney cry from the real deal. Same thing goes with Piro our dog. So last night while we were snuggled in bed watching TV, Piro goes “Woof”. Not multiple woofs, but just one. That is NOT good sign and we ran out into the hall. Piro was in her “pointer” mode used to tell us there is some weird stuff happening and we better deal with it or she will.

There, waiving his (her) little feelers at me was this big black (later to be determined as more brownish) tarantula about the size of a cell phone but with a lot more hair.

In my head, Harry Belefonte is singing “… very deadly black tarantula…” and I am going for the shoe.

“NO!” says the bug queen. “We must capture it!”. “Oh yeah,” says I, “Like the spider you captured last night in your bare hands? The one that bit you?”. “Si!” says she, “But be careful this one doesn’t bite you! It will hurt terribly!”.

Ummm. OK… thanks for that.

In a thrice I have returned from the kitchen with plastic container with top. “NO!” Screams she. “We put food in that!”

It is good to know that my bug crazy bride has some boundaries! She gives me that disgusted wife-look known by all husbands while thinking, I am sure, “Why did I marry so far down the food chain?”, and is off to the kitchen to bring back another plastic container that we apparently do not eat from.

It is now my job to coax this monster into the cup thingy. As you might imagine, the spider has his (her) own feelings about this process, and I learn two truly important things. First, Tarantulas can move a lot faster than they do on like Animal Planet and second, I can move a faster than I ever imagined on this planet.

However, I was fairly sure that despite my wife’s thinking I was in fact higher up the food chain than spider, I could capture this baby as charged! I surround it (yeah, right) and eventually get it into the container and placed the newly punctured top in place.

I decide to take a peek at the mother! I carefully lift the top and look in. Spidey does not move. I am not sure which end is which. Niether head nor tail!

Now the dumb part…Why I ever did what I did next, I’ll never know. Maybe she was right about the food chain thing. Anyway, I decide I want to KNOW which end is which, so I reach in and touch it with a pen tip. This time I learned three important things!

First, Tarantulas can jump, second, olde people can too, and third, if you make a paste of dry detergent and water, it is useful for removing many organic based stains from underwear.

Anyway, after recapturing the damned thing, we all go to bed (the tarantulas in his/her own room) and try to sleep.

Bright and early this morning, I take the thing out to a vacant lot (but conveniently next to a neighbor we do not particularly like ) and free this fellow. The Great White Hunter again conquers the jungles of Costa Rica!

So off she goes, mas o menos sin ropa, to the patio where she can get a better looksy. Next thing I hear is a scream to “come quick” and in her best Ricky Ricardo Spanish (way to fast for me to understand), that “there is something big and alive in the back yard”. Clearly, this was not the pool!

So off I dash (anybody still use the word dash?) to see what this is about. Well there WAS something out there in the rain and cold and it was 1. NOT happy with the dog’s attention and 2. Crawling toward a tree in the corner of the property.

Piro had found an owl (buho) who was evidently hurt or very sick.

ML ran for the camera while I tried to find a thick towel so I could capture it. I needed the towel because something clicked in my memory that owls have strong beeks, nasty claws and an unwillingness to be captured even by those humans with good intentions. Thank you Discovery Channel or Animal Channel!
ML and I got back to the yard just in time to see our owl make it to the piña bush. For those of you who know not a piña bush, they are a nasty little tree that has a ton of sticky things and when touched, can make you a very unhappy camper indeed.

The rain was coming harder, but we had little choice but to wait until morning and try to find it again.

One thing though… it appeared to be a baby and that made sleep all the more difficult.

At 5:30 next morning we were in the back yard. ML was convinced our baby owl had fled, but I was less sure as for the brief time I saw it, it appeared to have a broken wing, and our back yard is surrounded by a ten foot concrete wall that would not be negotiable without the ability to fly.

Sure enough, our owl was perched in a low tree, wet and not looking at all happy. I reached in and dropped a bath towel around her (him?), avinding the beek and claws. It seemed though that the owl was far more interested in being wrapped in a warm towel than fighting the big gringo. It did have a broken wing though, so I am sure that effected its flight or fight reaction.

We decided the best place to take a wounded bird was Zoo Ave.

Zoo Ave is an incredible zoo here in Costa Rica, but something very few tourists ever visit. The times I have been there, it was almost all Costa Rican visitors. This is a shame as Zoo Ave is a marvelous place covering 59 hectares of beautifully landscaped grounds. It is also a wildlife rescue center for injured wildlife.

It sports a HUGE bird collection (the largest in Central America) including numerous toucans, cranes, curassows, parrots, more than 100 other Costa Rican bird species. Zoo Ave is one of only two zoos in the world to display the amazing and resplendent quetzals. (See photo left. Click it to enlarge). There are also crocodile, deer, turtles, ostrich, tapirs, peccaries, pumas, and all the indigenous monkeys in large enclosures. Anyway… Back to the bird!

I had to wait a few hours for the zoo to open, so I decided to keep our little friend in the towel inside a laundry hamper in our closet where it would be dark, quiet and catless. However, when I later went to get her, she was GONE! This, of course, was impossible as it is a small walk-in closet. After 5 minutes of searching, I found her nestled in my shoe! Well I told you she was small! (that and I have big feet).

So I head out to Zoo Ave and meet up with Ingrid who looks exactly like someone sent over from Hollywood casting when a “zoo worker” was required). Our little owl was still all wrapped up in the towel, but undaunted, Ingrid just picks her up bare handed and the bird seemed delighted to just sit on her palm. It seems our owl was very sick indeed and thus not prone to biting. She also told me our little owl was not a baby, but a full grown adult! Ingrid told be they get hundreds of owls and other wild creature brought to the zoo every year.

I signed her over to the zoo which seemed odd, but Ingrid explained that after this little owl is all better (which she assured me was very likely), the bird will be reurned to our yard! Seems they always try to return any injured animal to the placed where it was found.

We are going to wait a while and call Ingrid to get an update. Cool story huh? More later!