My daughter and I were walking to the edge of our woods in the Ozarks of Arkansas when all of a sudden, she felt something race across her bare foot! We searched the ground and saw the tarantula (Aphonopelma hentzi), a native critter of the Ozarks, but not commonly seen. It was hunkered under some foliage, so we called the neighbor kids up to come over and see it with us. 10-year-old Kyler had watched his dad pick them up before, so he gave it a try and it crawled right onto his hand and slowly up to his head. We let it walk back into the woods soon after and have only seen it once since that day.