Love is in the air on the Colorado plains — the kind that makes your heart beat a bit faster, quickens your step and makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up.
It’s tarantula mating season, when male spiders scurry out of their burrows in search of a mate, and hundreds of arachnophiles flock to the small farming town of La Junta to watch them emerge in droves.
Scientists, spider enthusiasts and curious Colorado families piled into buses just before dusk last weekend as tarantulas began to roam the dry, rolling plains. Some used flashlights and car headlights to spot the arachnids once the sun set.
Back in town, festivalgoers flaunted their tarantula-like traits in a hairy leg contest — a woman claimed the title this year — and paraded around in vintage cars with giant spiders on the hoods. The 1990 cult classic film “Arachnophobia,” which follows a small town similarly overrun with spiders, screened downtown at the historic Fox Theater.
For residents of La Junta, tarantulas aren’t the nightmarish creatures often depicted on the silver screen. They’re an important part of the local ecosystem and a draw for people around the U.S. who might have otherwise never visited the tight-knit town in southeastern Colorado.
Word spread quickly among neighbors about all the people they had met from out of town during the third year of the tarantula festival.
Among them was Nathan Villareal, a tarantula breeder from Santa Monica, California, who said he heard about the mating season and knew it was a spectacle he needed to witness. Villareal sells tarantulas as pets to people around the U.S. and said he has been fascinated with them since childhood.
“Colorado Brown” tarantulas are the most common in the La Junta area, and they form their burrows in the largely undisturbed prairies of the Comanche National Grassland.
In September and October, the mature males wander in search of a female’s burrow, which she typically marks with silk webbing. Peak viewing time is an hour before dusk when the heat of the day dies down.
“We saw at least a…
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