I love my wife very much. My wife loves turtles very much. I now am the proud owner of 6 different turtles/tortoises, due to the fact that I love my wife. She has been wanting a specific breed of tortoise for a long time. I finally have given in and decided that she could have a Sulcata Tortoise. I made this decision on Sunday. Today I now have 2 of them. These tortoises get up to 200lbs. Now you see why I was hesitant about letting her get one of this variety of toroise, much less 2. 

     When you order one of these tortoises you have to pay 39.99 for the shipping for it to be overnighted from its location. I did this the first time on Sunday. The store opened on Monday, waited till the end of the day and sent out our cute little Sulcata Tortoise. 

Cute little guy isn't he? So I was up and listening carefully for a knock on the door early Monday morning. The package arrived at 10 in the morning. I go to open it up and find a little deli bowl that you would get some potato salad in at the deli, with some potting soil in it. I do not visably see a tortoise however. So me being the brave man that I am start poking my finger in the dirt, thinking to myself that this turtle is gonna be a lot smaller that I had originally thought. When all of the sudden I feel something jump on my hand. I look down, and there is a freaking spider on my hand!!!

     Anyone who knows me, knows that I have a very weird case of arachnophobie. If I am doing yard work or landscaping, I pay no mind to spider and brush them off and to the side. However, If I am inside a house and clean, meaning not covered in dirt or grass, then for some reason I am absolutely terified of spiders. So my immediate reaction to looking down and seeing this spider on my hand was to use the lid to scrape it off in what had to be one of the fastest reaction's of my life. In my haste, the front 3 of the left side of the poor spiders legs got broke off. This made me feel bad as even though I would kill any house spider on sight in my house, I do it quickly and, hopefully, painlessy. 

    So I call the store that we bought the Sulcata Tortoise from immediately. I get no answer either. By this time I'm starting to think that this was a scam, and instead of just ripping me off and calling it a day. They wanted to add insult to injury and sent a poisonous spider to teach me a lesson about ordering animals through the mail or something crazy like that. So I call my Bank and immediately challenge the purchase in hopes of getting back my 150 bucks.

    My wife is very sad at this point as I called her on the phone and told her about my deadly encounter with a poisonous looking spider, and the fact that we did not receive the baby tortoise that I had promised her. And since I love my wife so much, I got back on line and found another website and read over 100 reviews about the website. Everything looked good so I shelled out another 150 bucks for another turtle, that I would receive the next morning. This time I even called them and spoke to them just to make sure they were a legitimate business. Boy is my wife gonna love me, I thought to myself.

     The next morning, I receive the Baby Sulcata Tortoise from the UPS man at 9:45, then to my surprise, the DHL man shows up at my door at 10:30 with a package. I opened this package and found another baby Sulcata Tortoise. Inside, there was a note. Sorry about the mix up, I dont know if you have any friends that would want the baby tarantula, or if you would like to keep it, but either way, you can keep it for free. Turns out that was not a spider, it was a Salmon Bird Eating Tarantula!!! The biggest Tarantula in the world when fully grown!!

     Now, I explained my weird variety of arachnophobia earlier, but heres the really weird part about it. I am not scared of tarantula's like I am spiders. I kinda want to have one and have told my wife this in the past and all my friends. Dont know why, cant quite explain it, even to myself. I think its because I can kinda see the bigger tarantulas face and maybe make out its intent a little. I dont know! LOL. Here is the thing. I feel a little beholden to this tarantula do to the fact that I broke off three of its legs and it was just a baby. I feel like I need to nurse it back to health at least before I give it to a good owner. My wife is not happy about this at all, but she did stop by the pet store on the way home and buy me a tank and all the other goodies needed to raise this thing. I am now the owner of 6 Turtles/Tortoises, 2 dogs, and a Giant Salmon Bird Eating SPider that will one day get 10 inches wide. I did some research and the legs will eventually grow back, to my relief!

    Just thought I would share this adventure with you guys and see if you had any crazy stories like this happen to you guys recently.