It's Timmy!!!

Here I am, just drinking my coffee and minding my own business and reading up on the goings ons with the what have you's and the whatnot's on the interwebs and BAM!

Suddenly, a dark figure from my past emerges.

Sumuvabitch!

It's Timmy!

I told you all the story of my little run in with Timmy last year in this post:

http://elpinchepirata.blogspot.com/2012/07/tarantualas-arachnids-or-assholes.html

Short story - while communing with "the mighty and great spirit" and as I was just about to realize that we are all "one" and that life is just a journey and how the purpose of this life is to learn to get along with one another (also tune in, turn on, and drop out) a tarantula the size of your average Shetland pony  galloped out of the Arizona mountains and into my little peyote induced "vision quest" and trampled my face, breast, chest, neck, and head.

It was scary.

And now, he is Sri Lanka stirring up more trouble.

(Timmy gets around.)

http://news.sky.com/story/1073751/tarantula-the-size-of-a-human-face-discovered

Apparently Timmy has been fomenting civil unrest amongst the Sri Lankans for the past couple years but now he's been caught red-handed.

And even better, put under glass to be poked and prodded until he spills the beans about his nefarious nighttime activities.


Tarantula The Size Of A Human Face Discovered

The giant tarantula is as big as a human face.

Its legs, which have unique daffodil-yellow markings, span a massive 20cm (eight inches). The arachnid also has a distinctive pink band around its body.

The new species was found in the war-torn north of the South Asian country by scientists from Sri Lanka's Biodiversity Education and Research (BER) organisation.

It has been named Poecilotheria rajaei, in recognition of a senior police officer called Michael Rajakumar Purajah who guided the research team through a hazardous jungle overrun by civil unrest in order to seek out the spider.

The arachnid had originally been presented to BER three years ago by villagers in Mankulam who had killed a male specimen.

Scientists immediately realised the dead spider was not like anything they already knew and a group was charged with finding any living relatives.

The living Poecilotheria rajaei were eventually discovered in the former doctor's quarters of the village's hospital.

According to wired.com, Ranil Nanayakkara, the co-founder of BER, said: "They are quite rare.

"They prefer well-established old trees, but due to deforestation the number have dwindled and due to lack of suitable habitat they enter old buildings."

The website described the tarantula as "colourful, fast and venomous".

The species is said to be related to a class of South American tarantula that includes the Goliath bird-eater, one of the world's largest spiders.

In other reports Mr Nanayakkara is quoted as saying none of the tarantulas found in Sri Lanka have bites that are deadly to humans. However, the Poecilotheria rajaei would be able to kill animals as large as mice, lizards and small birds and snakes.

Peter Kirk, who covered the discovery for the British Tarantula Society's journal, told Sky News: "Ranil has been working on these spiders since 2009 out in Sri Lanka and this is the first of what is thought to be a number of new species he has discovered in what was previously the inaccessible northern region of the island.

"It demonstrates that wildlife continues to survive whilst we are in the throes of conflict and that they can adapt to its changing environment - but also highlights that we risk destroying the habitats of species new to science and condemning them to extinction before they are even discovered."

Also, next trip to Europe, I plan to drop in on the British Tarantula Society.
Those guys know how to party.