To kind of go along with the caterpillar migration above, the photo here is of a female trantula we had as a pet years ago.

The tarantulas have an interesting background also.   We have a lot on and around us.  We know their holes and those are either female or juvenile male holes.   The first 11 years of the male, they look exactly like a female.   When they mature that summer, they molt and then never eat again.  They now have the male characteristics of sperm packets on their pedipalps and hooks on the front inner pair of legs to mate with a female.

The mating process is a bit complex and males can get eaten by the female if they are not fast enough to get away after mating.  Now to get to a story.  We have often had people from the Eastern US come in and tell of hearing tarantulas make good pets and when they were in Arizona, they found one and took it home.   They then say they must have done something wrong since they couldn't find anything the spider would eat and it died.   They were sad they did something very wrong.  Well, I told them all they did was catch a male, which no longer eats and its only mission left in life is to find a female to mate with.  All they did was catch a male who was dying anyway at the end of the season.  I tell them all they did was keep it from mating.

I often hear of the male migrations that happen in many places.   

We had a female, not the same one in the photo here but one when we opened our shop and had it for 39 years before it passed away.  Now that is a long life for a spider and people are often amazed they can live this long.   Of course that is in captivity and wild ones can get picked off for food and not make it that long.

Here in Arizona it is 85 degrees F.

This morning I came across about 8 or so feathers in an open space not too far from our house.   I recognized them as Great Horned Owl feathers but with only a few of the feathers there, I had to wonder about how a few feathers got there with no dead animal.   My assumption here was that the owl came down on a rabbit or jack rabbit and in trying to kill it the animal gave a bit of a fight and some feathers were pulled out in the struggle.   All I found were a few feathers so no complete story but the feathers were so pretty I took a photo.

Sometimes nature gives you part of a story and you have to try and fill in the rest.

I know they are Great Horned Owl feathers but how they got in the open and just a few, is only a guess.

The spine defense is mostly for birds which find caterpillars good food, all except the ones with these kinds of spines.

He asked all the details of where I had found it.   It seems that this moth, a Northern Giant Flag Moth, was known but nobody had ever found its food plant.   Being the same time of years I had found them, I told the moth expert where I had found them.  He didn't waste a moment but immediately headed for the area I had told him I had found them.   An hour later he came back down elated, he had not only found a number of the caterpillars but also been able to identify the plant they were feeding on.  

This happened one other time with the same friend.  I had taken a photo of a moth in the Huachuca Mountains in Cochise County and when he saw the moth he also got quite excited.  He said that the moth was a Canadian moth and to his great surprise, had never been found this far South and my photo was a record for the range of the species.   Nice to meld my mineral interest with other areas of science also.