Tarantula found crossing road on Ottawa residential street

Anne Beck and her daughterJulia were driving along aresidential street in the Ottawa community of Carpon Monday afternoon, returning home from aneighbourhood bakery,when Julia spotteda tarantula crossingthe road.

No, no, Annesaid, thinking it was probably aHalloween decoration that blew off someone's porch.

No such luck.

After getting out of their vehicle, they discovered it wasindeed a tarantula, in this case,a rathergentle female specimen from the arid climes ofChile that was eventually returned to its owners.

Anne stood guard to prevent the creature from getting squished, taking questions and submitting to photographs from curious drivers, while her daughter went home to fetcha cooler.

They used the brush end of a winter ice scraper to push the tarantula inside.

It wasn't having it.

"That's when the fangs came out, and we went, 'Oh my God!'" Anne said in an interview on Wednesday.

1st such call in zoo's history

After getting the tarantula safely in the cooler, the pair calledLittle Ray's Reptile Zoo. It's the first resort of many Ottawa-area residentswho find exotic pets such as snakes, runaway turtles and even the occasional wild black widow spider.

But this was the first time in the zoo's15-year history thatit ever got a call about a tarantula found crawling throughthe streets.

"We got the call that there's a tarantula loose in Carp, to which your first response is, 'Meh, probably not.' ... We get calls all the time, 'There's a rattlesnake under my bed,'and in the majority of cases, it's somebody who probably forgot to take their meds that day, that type of thing," said Matt Korhonen, a curator at the zoo.

"But on the flipside, you treat everything very seriously and you never know how it's going to pan out, and in this case, it really was a tarantula."

Korhonen hadno problem letting the tarantula crawl all over his arms. The trick, he said, is to get a sense of its mood first, the same way you might gauge the mood of a spouse.

"You can come home and look at your wife and know if she's in a great mood or a terrible mood, and you can look at this spider and again, just read its body language, and you know immediately if it's in a good mood or not," Korhonensaid.

Not so sure you can accurately decipher a tarantula'smood? Here are some tipsto save for later you know,just in case.

Tarantula bad mood danger signs

1. Apparently a grumpy tarantula will rubthehairs on its abdomen with its legs. The hairs are similar to fibreglass, and can cause itchiness and other skin reactions invarying degrees, depending on the type of tarantula.
2. The tarantula will rear up, like a horse but with more legs than a horse, of course, and show you its disgusting fangs.
3. Fang strike delivery. If this occurs,you must have reallyscrewed something up.

It's rare to find a tarantula because it typically finds safe places to hideand even burrow underground,Korhonen said.

"There's probably a onepercent chance that this spider should have ever been found. Whoever owns this spider should buy a lottery ticket," he said.

Tarantula reunited with owner Wednesday

Little Ray's posted a message online and met Wednesday with the tarantula's owners.

It turns out the spider has been a family pet in the Carp neighbourhood for eightyears.

During some home renovations, its owners moved the tarantulaterrarium out of the house and into the garage, where the spidercapitalized on a loosened hatch to make its escape.

The familytold the zoothey're glad to have the tarantulabackand are promising to keep a lid on it.