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Tuesday, September 19, 2017

Spider Pavilion: Do You Lack Spiders In Your Life?

What's that crawling close to you? Could it be a spider? No, it's just some string pushed by the wind. Darn, you wanted it to be a good ol' arachnid, right? Well, have no worries! If you head down to the Natural History Museum they have spiders, spiders, spiders!

Spider Pavilion
event sponsored by Western Exterminator
September 15 – November 26, 2017
Natural History Museum
General Admission + The Spider Pavilion is how it goes
 $17 for adults, children 3-12, $10

Just come to the recently opened to the public, Spider Pavilion! Now open until November and just in time to for Halloween festivities is the annual Spider Pavilion, showcasing many spiders above head and all around. TTDILA headed there on the public opening last weekend to see what has eight legs and has been scaring little sisters for years. Though, we saw a bunch of little girls with their parents enjoying the spiders too.

*Literal heads up. Don't put your child on your shoulders inside the pavilion. That's where the webs are... and big spiders.

After a short walk through of trying to spot all the spiders-and some aren't hard to miss-we started chatting with one of the Gallery Interpreters, Amanda K., about the pavilion. "The green lynx, that's a local, have you be able to spot it?," she asked. Well, reader can you?

Here it is up close from the same photo.
It took me a while to even spot this local spider. Amanda, explained why it's her favorite of the spiders there.
"So the rest of the spiders you see in hear are orb weaving spiders. So there like couch potatoes. They build these big circular webs and usually sit in the middle of the webs. Then they just wait for there food to come by. The green lynx is an active hunter, it blends in and waits for innocent insects and it'll just grab'em."



For the most part you'll be seeing some fairly large spiders, the golden silk spider and the common garden spider all around up in their webs or just hidden out of view.

The only pink toe tarantula we saw and jumping spiders are in a smaller area in cute little see-through boxes with tiny furniture. If you can't find the pink toe tarantula just look behind the tiny staircase, it likes to hide out behind there.

*Now remember the Spider Pavilion is part of the Natural History Museum, right next to the coliseum. Check ahead if there's going to be a football game the day you're planning on going, usually the museum web-site will give a heads up, but check yourself. Because, it really adds to traffic and makes it much harder to find parking.

"If you look at the cephalothorax, which is kind of like their head, its got that sort of creepy skull/mask pattern on it," that's what Amanda told us as we looked at the golden silk spiders up close. When you go see if you can see it on them.

Though they might look scary, the spiders there are fascinating to learn about up close. The staff is ready to answer your questions on all topics about spiders. And I don't think you can tell me about any other places filled with spiders you can study up close? Can you?

To see the exhibit you'll just venture outside of the museum to the pavilion area and go in groups allotted 30 minutes inside, which actually went by quite fast.

So if your lacking spiders in your life, head to the pavilion before it switches back to butterflies this Spring.