#56 - TALES FROM THE FIELD #12

Before we pop back to stories from Suriname 2012, I'd like to continue in Sri Lanka. It was the trip of a lifetime and I was fortunate to observe my two (or three) favorite theraphosid spiders. Two, if you just count them as Poecilotheria subfusca and P. ornata; three if you recognize the two very different forms of "subfusca". As you can imagine, the tarantula-centric draw of Sri Lanka is the leopard spiders (or tiger spiders or ornamental tarantulas or parachute spiders or whatever you wish to call them). The genus Poecilotheria is certainly the entire reason we were in Sri Lanka. This had us looking to the skies as we examined tree after tree looking for holes and crevices and shining our lights into hundreds upon hundreds of potential retreats. However, our eyes did wander to the undergrowth. Often this was me looking for snakes and lizards and frogs, but we did keep our eyes open for fossorial tarantula species.

Unfortunately, before we left for Sri Lanka we learned that Paul would only join us for the first half of the field trip. He had growing concerns about the safety and likelihood of hassle and potential arrest from wildlife officers, but he had a more important reason to shorten his stay. His mother-in-law was very ill and was living with him and his wife Sue. It would be a lot to ask of his wife to handle the extensive care and related issues on her own for almost four weeks. So he made plans to stay with us for about 10 days and then departed.

Now down to a threesome - Guy Tansley and I, plus Paul's brother Mark who isn't really a tarantula hunter - and with my target species "in the bag", I was quite happy to finish our stay in beautiful Sri Lanka in holiday mode. However, my companions have this attitude that field trips "are not holidays" and that they must always be work and we must always rough it with mediocre or worse accommodations. Additionally, my two companions were running low on funds and my free-spending nature would cause some strain. I did want to visit at least one of Sri Lanka's famed natural parks to see an elephant in the wild and perhaps get a chance to see a leopard. We succeeded in this on a guided trip in Yala National Park, which has various blocks known by other names such as Ruhuna and Kumana. This park is the most visited and the second largest national park and is the best opportunity to catch a glimpse of an elusive leopard. Because of the thick woods seeing elephants there is more difficult, and the best place for elephants is Udawalawe, which is much more open and allows easier viewing of these immense mammals.

I'll post some pix from Yala at the end of this blog entry, but first I want to talk about our fourth and final Sri Lankan tarantula species. After Paul was gone we were determined to find one without him and we really wanted to find a burrowing species. Yala is located on the far southeastern coast of Sri Lanka and is nearby the best places to find Poecilotheria vittata. I had been given a location by a friend to search for this spider, but we were unable to find the exact area and we knew that we would be looking in small trees in an area with many people present and we would be at great risk of attracting unwanted attention. We decided to give up on P. vittata and instead visit an area where my friend Thorsten Kroes had told me of two new species of Chilobrachys that have yet to be described. He sent me photos of both and one was a beautiful specimen with blue legs much like the Vietnamese forms. The other was a blackish species, which according to his info would be found an hour south of the blue form. Of course, we decided to try for the more colorful one.

Unfortunately, when we arrived at the locality provided we could not find the exact area. We were told that it was on the grounds of the temple and we ended up at another temple and forest reserve only about 15 miles to the east after finding some very odd lodging. It would take me a blog in itself to describe where we stayed, but the accommodations were nice. We had a house at the top of the mountain all to ourself. There were two bedrooms so I took my own and Guy and Paul shared the one with two beds. The road from the lodge and most of the other cabins was impossibly steep and rose significantly to the plateau where our own little house was. We were sort of treated like dignitaries as we seemed to be the first "white people" to ever stay at what was, for Sri Lanka, an upscale resort. It seemed to be a getaway place for the more well-off Sri Lankans and up on our plateau they were building a hotel that would have the biggest swimming pool in Sri Lanka. Unfortunately, the crew worked mostly at night and sleeping was a bit tough with their generators and machinery making noise.

But back to the hunt for Chilobrachys ... the manager of our "lodge" had suggested a forest reserve and, although we found other interesting creatures there, we struck out with tarantulas. So the next day we returned to the temple a half hour east and sought permission to search the grounds. We sell ourselves as just tourists wanting to look for birds and monkeys in the forest. These are sacred temples and permission from the "head monk" is required. This requires an intermediary and fortunately we had a driver that acted as translator. Most have steep stairs that lead up the hillside to Buddhas and praying areas. By this point of the trip Mark had had it with leeches and hiking and tended to just hang out with our driver. So Guy and I walked through the eerie Buddhist monastery grounds and into the woods searching trees and looking for burrows. There were plenty of beautiful birds and the ubiquitous toque macaques, but no spiders of note. Around the world roadside embankments make for great tarantula hunting and eventually we descended the road with our eyes scouring the mossy embankment. We found burrows with frogs and giant amblypigids and then found tarantula burrows. We expected the spiders we tickled out to be the blue-legged variety, but it seemed that this area so close to the locality Thorsten had given me for that colorful new Chilobrachys only held the black undescribed form. Still, we were happy to finally find a terrestrial and to find another species without Paul. After that I, at least, was in full on holiday mode. :)

The rest of the tale will be with photos ... 
All images © Michael Jacobi except where noted as © Guy Tansley.

Guy at the trailhead leading to the Buddhist Temple

The road that led to the trailhead. Chilobrachys habitat.

Guy and Mark search the roadside embankment.
Guy is dressed for the jungle hunting he and I did. Mark is dressed for hanging back by our van.
Once we started searching the embankments along the road where leeches were few he joined us.

A large amblypid found in a hole in the roadside embankment.

Adenomus kelaartii, a toad we found in embankment holes.

Classic embankment burrow holding Chilobrachys sp.

"Chilobrachys sp."

This gorgeous golden salticid was also found along the road where we hunted Chilobrachys.

Hello to you too!

This eight inch thick as my forefinger millipede was also found along the embankments.
We found three different varieties of this giant millipede throughout southern Sri Lanka.
We called this the white-leg.
There was also one with grayish white legs with a dark band and one with orangish legs.

This toque macaque was curious what the three "pale skins" were doing!

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Moving on to a few photos from Yala National Park ...

Yala is one of those places where you hire a safari jeep and they four wheel it at high speed around the park chasing possible leopard sightings. This isn't an activity I enjoyed or recommend. All they care about is getting you to see one so you'll get a tip. There are reports of these jeeps hitting wildlife, including leopards! We were not too happy with the experience, but we did manage to see a leopard in a tree off in the distance. Binoculars were necessary to see the lounging cat and Guy's little point and shoot proved to have an amazing optical zoom and he was able to capture the below photo.

Sri Lankan leopard at Yala National Park. © Guy Tansley

Here is my crop and retouch of Guy's image.
It was far in the distance, but it was a thrill to see what is among my favorite animals for the first time.
© Guy Tansley

If your only experience with peafowl is at zoos and such you probably thought they lived on the ground.
There are loads of peafowl at Yala that reminded us that they do fly and perch.

However, they also spend time on the ground. Peacock in full display.

Yala is also home to grey langurs.

A sambar deer buck. These deer are what leopards eat along with langurs and other mammals.
© Guy Tansley

Feral dogs scavenge on a sambar deer corpse. © Guy Tansley

The southern border of Yala is the ocean. This rock is called Patanagala.

Water buffalo living up to its name. © Guy Tansley

Crested (or changeable) hawk-eagle, Nisaetus cirrhatus. © Michael Jacobi

We did see an elephant at Yala but, as advertised, it was in thick cover and you could barely make it out even though it was 20 yards or less away. I won't post one of those poor images here. The next morning we drove back west and passed Udawalawe where the elephant viewing is supposed to be excellent and were surprised that the highway went right past the reservoir and there was an elephant that had wandered right along the fence line along the road. The Yala elephant was my first wild elephant, but this adventurous Udawalawe elephant was kind enough to venture to the road so I could see my first wild elephant up close and get good photos. I would have loved to do a safari there, but the funds were low for some and this elephant made it unnecessary! Until next time ... MJ

Lucky day alongside the Udawalawe reservoir.
Guy and Mark photograph an elephant who had come to where someone had been dumping produce.
Note the electric fence to keep them in the national park and off the road.

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#53 - TALES FROM THE FIELD #11 - IN SEARCH OF MY FAVORITE SPIDER

TALES FROM THE FIELD #11 - IN SEARCH OF MY FAVORITE SPIDER

Let's leave Suriname for now and return to Sri Lanka. When Andrew Smith and I became friends I asked him about all of his travel. I have travelled the world since then, but at the time I had only seen 48 of the 50 United States, much of Canada and various locations in Mexico. I only dreamed of venturing beyond North America. Andrew, of course, had been to countless countries in pursuit of theraphosid spiders. My first trip with him would be to Costa Rica in 2006, but even before that amazing journey I asked him which of the countries he had visited and he quickly responded "Sri Lanka". For a tarantula lover whose favorite genus was, and is, Poecilotheria that answer was very encouraging. I had already become known for my extensive "Pokie" breeding projects and my early American success with my favorite tarantula, Poecilotheria subfusca. But Andy wasn't just talking about the spiders. He told me of a gorgeous land with lovely people and great food. In fact, he called it the most beautiful country he had visited. Sri Lanka became my bucket list destination. Oddly enough, my trip to Sri Lanka would not include Andrew. Our team had taken the year 2013 off due to financial considerations and when planning for 2014 came around we learned that Andrew would be having surgery on his eyes and that his elderly mother was nearing her end. 2014 wouldn't be possible for Andrew. So Paul Carpenter, Guy Tansley and I started discussing planning our own trip. Madagascar was suggested first. I had dreamed of going there since I was a child, and as a gecko and chameleon lover this would seem to be paradise. However, Madagascar has sadly become a decimated country with little rainforest left, crime, corruption, poverty and squalid conditions. I had a contact in Madagascar in Olaf Pronk and wrote him, but my research told me that our viewing of lemurs, chameleons, day geckos, leaf-tailed geckos and other creatures I had long fantasized about seeing in nature would be limited to a few preserves. The tarantula fauna of Madagascar is largely unknown, but it was likely to just be some "brown jobs", including "Monocentropus lambertoni". I put this species in quotes because the about to go to print BTS Journal 30(2) contains two articles penned by me including one that gives an overview of the hobby's "M. lambertoni" and raises the question of whether this identification is correct. Regardless, I saw Madagascar as depressing, unsafe and filthy and voiced my concerns. I was quite surprised when Paul mentioned that he would be willing to return to Sri Lanka. I had assumed that repeat visits wouldn't be considered and we would have to go somewhere Paul had never been. Paul has been Andy's traveling companion for something like 25 years so he has been to just about every exotic locale you can name. It would be tough to find somewhere he hadn't been, especially since I already knew that he wasn't enamored with travel to the New World. I leaped at the chance to go to Sri Lanka and the team knew full well that seeing Poecilotheria subfusca in its natural habitat would be one of my life's greatest experiences. Spoiler alert: it was.

When I first bred Poecilotheria subfusca a dozen years ago there was no talk of "highland" and "lowland". This was long before mention of a lowland form existed. This was long before people improperly began using the old specific epithet "bara". We just had "subfusca" and you can read about my early experiences with this species in captivity in the following articles. These articles were published in my old magazine ARACHNOCULTURE; in issues 1(1) and 2(1), respectively.

• EXPERIMENTAL HOUSING FOR MONTANE POECILOTHERIA
• THE FIRST US BREEDINGS OF POECILOTHERIA SUBFUSCA

Map © 2007 Geology.com

At the time people who used common or popular names sometimes referred to P. subfusca as the Ivory Ornamental, a reference to its white chelicerae, but it was also called the Kandy Ornamental and later the Kandy Highland Ornamental. I admit I was occasionally guilty of using the latter name, which you learn is actually oxymoronic. (And all common names could be argued to be "moronic"). But "Kandy Highland" is actually a contradiction of terms and I'll expand on that below.

Kandy is a city that people have associated with P. subfusca, but I knew from my talks with Andrew, many of which occurred with fine whiskey and finer cigars, that he had found P. subfusca near Nuwara Eliya. This city is actually at high elevation and Andy spoke of seeing his breath in the morning and cold nights below the blankets. Nuwara Eliya is loosely pronounced noor-AY-lee-uh, spoken as one smooth word, not two.

I'm not going to drag out my explanation of "lowland" and "highland" here. Those of you who saw my lecture "Sri Lanka: Land of Leopard Spiders" at the BTS Lectures in February 2015 or my ArachnoGathering #2 in March 2015 got the full explanation. I still intend to make a YouTube film presentation of this material so the rest of you will have to wait. This is the incredibly concise version:

I used to HATE hearing people talk about "lowland" subfusca. I was skeptical. I didn't want to believe that my favorite spider would be subjected to controversy and hobby arguments and nomenclatural gibberish. I still HATE when people use the term "bara", which is taxonomically incorrect. However, as those who heard my lectures learned, I fully agree now that there are two forms of "subfusca" and I believe that they should be considered two different species. Without getting into nomenclatural semantics and ICZN rules and such I will say that I believe that "bara" is no longer an available name. I will also say that I disagree that the "lowland form" is deserving of a new species name. I would argue that the "lowland form" is P. subfusca and the "highland form" is the spider that should receive the new name. Fortunately, I know from personal communication that Ranil Nanayakkara - a Sri Lankan who is active in native tarantula descriptions and taxonomy - agrees with me. The short story is that years ago Andrew Smith told me that the preserved "bara" type specimen is the largest Poecilotheria he has ever seen, live or in spirit. Many of you should know that the lowland is a larger and lighter colored spider and the highland is a much darker and smaller spider. This only makes sense. It is true throughout the animal kingdom that, in races or populations or divergent species or whatever taxa you look at, high elevation organisms tend to be dark to absorb heat quicker and tend to be smaller. Getting back to the cities of Kandy and Nuwara Eliya. They are two different worlds and I'm not talking about the cities' topography, people, culture, etc., which are indeed very different. I am talking about climate. Kandy is hot and humid, but seasonally dry. It lies at an altitude of about 500 meters (just under 1700 feet). Nuwara Eliya sits at an altitude of just under 1900 meters or 6200 feet. Obviously, this is higher than our "mile high city" of Denver, Colorado. It is cold. It is damp. It almost never gets above 70ºF. You can see your breath at times. We froze at night. We had no hot water to shower with. As we walked the streets vendors were peddling down jackets and wool blankets. This is like no other place in Sri Lanka. Fortunately, (spoiler alert again) we were lucky enough to find "lowland subfusca" near Kandy and "highland subfusca" near Nuwara Eliya and they are two very different spiders. Even in my lightweight jungle trekking gear I was sweating bullets in the seasonally dry lowland rainforest where we found our Kandy spiders. We found our highland beauties in cold fog. I was wearing a fleece and rain jacket. Two worlds indeed. The cities are only 100 km apart, but their climate couldn't be much more different. Kandy is part of Sri Lanka's central "Hill Country", but temperatures reach 90ºF and it is very tropical. Nuwara Eliya is a cool, misty, magical place.

Since almost all of you are hobbyists, not taxonomists, I will add one more thought. It is important to remember that without accurate and honest locality data you have no idea what your captive hobby specimens are. I'm not just talking about the two forms of "subfusca". I am talking about any of your tarantulas. My photos show in situ spiders. I know exactly where each was found. What you have labeled in your terrariums does not have any accuracy attached to it except belief, faith and word of mouth. Apples and oranges. Don't compare hobby tarantulas, especially those that have been bred for years and may have "been mixed", to tarantulas in nature. Keep your "lowland" and "highland" separate and don't ever try to breed them to each other. (My friend Thorsten Kroes, who has studied Poecilotheria in both India and Sri Lanka and is a very successful captive breeder of the genus tells me that he hasn't had success intentionally trying to get them to breed, which is another argument for their speciation).

There ends the lesson. Now let's look at some photos and have them tell the stories. I'll let their captions provide additional details. As always, thanks for reading. MJ

Most photos © Michael Jacobi. All photos joint copyright held by © Michael Jacobi, Guy Tansley and Paul Carpenter, 2014 except where noted.

 View of Kandy and Kandy Lake © Bernard Gagnon
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

Mark Carpenter stands on a path into lowland rainforest near Kandy
where we found our "lowland subfusca" © Michael Jacobi

A pair of Toque Macaques or Rilewa that lived in the forest among "lowland subfusca" © Michael Jacobi

Guy shines his "torch" into tree crevices and holes searching for "subfusca" © Michael Jacobi

Guy works at tickling out one of the "lowland subfusca" we found © Michael Jacobi

Paul Carpenter and Guy Tansley pose behind the "lowland subfusca" resting on the buttress © Michael Jacobi

Your very happy author poses with a beautiful "lowland" beastie! © Guy Tansley

Portrait of the spider I had traveled 9000 miles to find! © Michael Jacobi
You won't find many this pale!

 in situ under natural light © Michael Jacobi

Just so you don't think all of Kandy's P. subfusca are as pale as the one above, here is an image of one found by Thorsten Kroes on an earlier trip. This one looks like my captive "lowland subfusca". © Thorsten Kroes

Paul and Guy as our foursome enjoys some cold Lion Lager after a hard day in the jungle.
Kandy is populous and is Sri Lanka's fastest growing city. It has plenty of restaurants and pubs.
 © Michael Jacobi

A different world.
Note my thermal long-sleeve shirt over my t-shirt and the rain jacket.
Also note the mud on my camera and jacket.
This is above our lodging in Nuwara Eliya after I fell down a steep trail and
my macro rig plunged about twenty feet to the forest floor. Still a smile, though ...
© Guy Tansley

The slide down the hillside was worth it!
Among my bucket list Sri Lankan reptiles was this montane lizard.
It is known as the rhino-horned lizard or kagamuva angkatussa (Ceratophora stoddartii).
It is endemic to Sri Lanka. © Michael Jacobi

Portrait of Ceratophora stoddartii © Michael Jacobi

A view of the hillsides around our lodging in Nuwara Eliya.
About 1000 feet more than a mile above sea level, this is a cool and damp region.
It is the home of the hobby's original P. subfusca, which I believe is deserving of another name.
© Michael Jacobi

The habitat of "subfusca" near Nuwara Eliya.
The misty evergreen forest reminded me of my years in Seattle.
© Michael Jacobi

Foggy scene reminiscent of a spooky film.
This is where we found our "highland beauties"
© Team Sri Lanka 2014

Words could never describe my feeling when I set my eyes on this spider.
I will never experience a greater thrill from another spider.
18,000 miles round trip, several thousand dollars and almost four amazing weeks
led up to seeing my favorite tarantula in its natural habitat.
This beauty made Sri Lanka 2014 the trip of a lifetime!
© Michael Jacobi

#40 - TALES FROM THE FIELD #6

My last installment in the ongoing Tales from the Field series detailed day one of our search for Poecilotheria ornata in the lowland rainforest outside of Kitulgala, Sri Lanka. Despite a bit of a delay finding the foot bridge across the Kelani river and then finding the correct path into the Makandawa Reserve, we had been successful and located a beautiful young adult specimen. However, she only had seven legs. We were unable to find any additional specimens and the late afternoon rains eventually sent us back to our hotel for an early dinner and beer. As we hiked back towards the bridge the rain steadily increased and we were quite soaked when we made it back to our waiting driver Aruna. We had hired a driver with a large mini van for the entire trip and he would drop us where we wanted and return at a prearranged time. He was waiting and whisked us back to our accommodations outside of Kitulgala.

Our driver Aruna at the start of the bridge across Kelani Ganga with Mark Carpenter behind him

We were very fortunate to find our seven-legged P. ornata and were determined to return the following day and hunt for more. However, day two would have our team become a threesome. As I mentioned in earlier TFTF posts, Mark Carpenter is not a spider hunter, but rather enjoys world travel and spending time with his brother Paul. He began to tire of one aspect of the Sri Lankan jungles - the leech. Leeches are common in Asian rainforests and they were abundant in Sri Lanka. As our trip progressed he became increasingly bothered by them. Unlike tiger leeches commonly encountered in places like Borneo, the Sri Lankan leeches did not have a painful bite. They don't transmit disease and really are more of a nuisance than a threat. I became accustomed to having my clothes become bloody and it seemed like the leeches were quite fond of my fat American blood. In fact, at one point Guy Tansley had a bit of a competition to see whose leech would become more engorged. In other words, would a leech become fatter on the large American or on the slight Geordie. I won. After about 70 minutes a leech I allowed to remain attached to my wrist and become as big around as my little finger and finally dropped off. Once they are completely full of blood they drop off and, at least as far as I was concerned, no harm, no foul. The only after effects were bloody clothing as they have an anticoagulant and the wound doesn't clot readily. The following photos show they way my socks would look at the end of the day and a very fat leech dining on me.

Well, Mark had had enough of these blood suckers. On day two of our P. ornata hunt he decided to linger back with our driver and take it easy. The lowland rainforest at Makandawa was particularly wet and leech-infested and the previous afternoon and evening's rains would only make it worse. Paul, Guy and I, being spider-crazed jungle trekkers, weren't bothered at all. We only had P. ornata on our mind. Spoiler alert ... we would have a very successful day two as a trio, and the photo below shows three tired and sweaty and leech-sucked spider hunters that couldn't have been happier!

Michael Jacobi, Guy Tansley & Paul Carpenter in the lowland rainforest of Makandawa

We hiked the few miles into the rain forest toward the spot where we found the seven-legged spider the day before. Kangaroo lizards continued to scurry and hop throughout the undergrowth. The jungle was wet and humid and we paused at a few stream crossings to look for frogs and snakes.

Through Paul's "Life in the Rainforest" and Guy's "Bugsnstuff"my mates put on education programs for children and many images were captured for their upcoming presentations.

Guy Tansley in one of the many streams along our path to Poecilotheria ornata.

We marched on to one wide stream that had giant boulders spanning its width. I went out upon the rocks to take some photographs. Before long I heard the guys call out that a spider had been found. We gathered at the tree hole and shined our flashlights on a beautiful Poecilotheria ornata. It wouldn't be easy to tickle this one out so we decided to fan out and search the surrounding trees for more. In one tree Guy had located a subadult perhaps four inches in leg span. It was "tickled" out of its hole and photographed.

We were noticing that none of these retreats looked permanent. They weren't shrouded by any silk and we discussed whether the spiders were moving about the area and simply taking up a suitable retreat during the daytime before moving again at night to wherever they would ambush their prey.

As we continued to shine our "torches" into each crevice and hole we would find other critters, especially amblypygids or "whip spiders".

I can tell you that any leeches that were sucking our blood went unnoticed. Despite wearing gaiters and being covered in Deet, the leeches were unavoidable and it wouldn't be until we pulled off our dank and sweat-soaked clothing later that we would notice blood stains. We were in P. ornata country and it was proving to me an amazing day. It would only become even more so when Paul found a tree trunk with a deep slot and discovered that there were two spiders inside. I ran over and used my height to get a better look. There were indeed two Poecilotheria ornata in the slotted trunk and one was a mature male.

Tree slot that contained an adult pair of P. ornata with images cropped side by side

Picture three grown men jumping up and down in a soggy jungle. High fives. Stinky, sweaty embraces.

We had now located four more P. ornata to go with the one from the previous day. This day's spiders were all found in the same area beside a wide stream with huge boulders. I cannot sufficiently describe to you how difficult it is to find Poecilotheria in nature. Finding five in two days is hard work well done. So many trees, so many holes. The proverbial needle in a haystack. All the while working in sweltering humidity among biting insects and sucking leeches.

We managed to get the pair out of the hole for a hard earned photo session. I'll let the pictures and their captions speak for themselves.

Adult female Poecilotheria ornata, Makandawa rainforest near Kitulgala, Sri Lanka © Michael Jacobi

Adult female Poecilotheria ornata, Makandawa rainforest near Kitulgala, Sri Lanka © Michael Jacobi

Female and HUGE adult male posed on the ground near the stream.
We tried unsuccessfully to get the pair side by side on the tree trunk.
The male had a hard time gripping the slimy, mossy surface of the trees.
He was almost ten inches in legspan.
Poecilotheria ornata, Makandawa rainforest near Kitulgala, Sri Lanka © Michael Jacobi

Adult male Poecilotheria ornata, Makandawa rainforest near Kitulgala, Sri Lanka © Michael Jacobi

Needless to say, quite a few celebratory Lion lagers were consumed after a long hot shower back at our hotel. The hardest thing was going back to the van where Aruna and Mark were waiting and trying to tell Mark about our great success without giving away too much to Aruna. As I mentioned before, Sri Lanka wildlife officials are on the lookout for spider, insect and reptile hunters. Although all we were taking were photographs, we did not want anyone to even know that. We had told Aruna the truth, albeit only the partial truth. Paul and Guy teach children about the rainforest and I am a photographer and author. Both of these are true, but we didn't say what we were specifically looking for to be on the safe side. I had been warned by one person who has hunted Poecilotheria in Sri Lanka that his driver had extorted money from him at the airport in order to keep his silence about what he had been searching for. All they would have found on us would be photographs, and we made sure we photographed putting every spider back into its tree hole. Of course, we wanted these film clips for ourselves, but they would also be handy in case we were accused of collecting. Still, even disturbing the spiders by "tickling" them out of their retreats could be considered a wildlife violation. We worked very secretively in Sri Lanka, which was odd after the way we had worked in other countries. I remember Andrew running around Costa Rica with a big rubber spider to try to communicate with farmers or other people we found in the rural areas we searched. We always solicited the help of the locals in our travels. But, in Sri Lanka, we were looking over our shoulders and when anyone saw us I would point my camera to the sky and just photograph a bird or a tree. We did our best to look like regular tourists, and since I had been told that Sri Lanka frowns upon tattoos as they are thought to only be worn by criminals, I was covered up and nobody ever saw the ornamental tarantulas tattooed on my legs.

Until our next journey into the field ... MJ