Dust swirls on the dirt roads running through more than 400,000 acres of cactus studded grasslands south of La Junta, Colo. Suddenly, Jessica LaPage spots the reason she’s here: A two-toned brown tarantula about the size of an adult’s fist, crawling through the scrubby plants
LaPage snaps a photo of it with her cell phone as the hairy clump with eight legs moves toward her. She jumps backward, barely stifling a fearful squeak. Asked if she’d like to hold one she answers, “Absolutely not!”
Tarantulas — hundreds of them — are now on the move in the plains of southeastern Colorado. While it may look like some kind of Fall migration, these large spiders are simply going mobile looking for love.
It’s tarantula mating season around here and La Junta, a city of about 7,300 capitalizes on the spiders’ season of romance with an annual tarantula festival.
A festival goer gets to hold a tarantula in the education pavilion at the second annual Tarantula Festival in La Junta, Colorado.
Shanna Lewis /Shanna Lewis
LaPage’s reaction to the big hairy spiders isn’t uncommon. Even so, they’ve got a lot of fans. So much, that little La Junta is aiming for the title: Tarantula Capital Of The World.
That’s something the city’s tourism director, Pamela Denahy, didn’t imagine as a kid growing up here.
“Never did I think that they would be a tourism draw,” she says.
But hundreds of people from all over Colorado and nearby states showed up for La Junta’s second annual tarantula celebration, held last weekend.
Festival goers got to cheer for their favorite homemade tarantula parade floats and costumes, kids got their faces and arms painted with rainbow colored spiders and bugs, and checked out…
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