They are actually quite docile.
My first encounter with them was about 4 months into my tenure in the Marine Corps. My platoon was setting up a bivouac on a shlef about half way up a mountain on Camp Pendleton (halfway between San Diego and Los Angeles) about an hour before sunset. I noted that the ground was littered with little holes about 3 inches in diameter. dozens of them....everywhere. Shortly after the sun tipped his hat over the top of the mountain for the evening, the ground began to crawl. Out of each of the holes popped hundreds of Tarantulas. My skin crawls at the very memory of it. After we got used to them being there, we started screwing around with them as Marines will do if you leave them to their own devices.
After my schooling, my first permanant duty station was about 4 miles down the road from that shelf and the little buggers were not as common, but every now and again, you would see one scurrying around the barracks. I managed to catch one and keep him in my quarters as a pet for the next two years. I had a rather elaborate hampster cage for him with tubes than bent and twisted about my room...you never knew were he would be. I even got him one of those little plastic balls to run in for exercise outside of the habitrail system.
Anyway...great photo, and thanks for the trip down memory lane.
:greenpbl:
greenpbl: ) is very soft to the touch! 
Tiny ones. Endearing ones. 
