Tarantulas

I’ve worked with quite a few snakes. Johnny Wallace from the House of Slithering is always on set to manage them. During the last shoot, he brought up the idea of using tarantulas that he breeds. Of course, I said of course. Ahna, Steffie, and Prana were more than happy to join in the fun and Jeff Goldberg, a talented photographer came along to help out. This is the first shoot that any of us, including Johnny, has done with the tarantulas. So we had absolutely no idea what to expect. 

There is some danger, so everyone had to sign waivers. The spiders use their claws for traction and if they are going over a difficult area where they need more traction, like crawling over your shoulder, they’ll also use their fangs to help pull them along. If they get spooked, they’ll shoot sharp hairs out of their body. In the end, they were all super gentle and actually cooperated much more than the snakes. 

What’s next? How about giant cockroaches? 

[There’s a second gallery at the bottom of the page with behind-the-scenes pics.]