by PATRICK LEJTENYI

First things first: tarantulas don’t kill people. Usually. Unless the bitee is severely allergic to the biter’s venom, what will usually result is some swelling, chest pains and fever. But immediate, shriekingly painful expiration? It just doesn’t happen that way.

That’s the first and probably most common myth Vincent Joseph wants to dispel. The 32-year-old creepy-crawly collector, whose face may be recognizable to some as a part-time Bily Kun bartender, has made rehabilitating the tarantula’s chilling reputation his life’s work. He exhibits his collection of assorted arthropods (segmented-body invertebrates with exoskeletons—insects, spiders and crustaceans, says the dictionary) to excitable, sometimes fearful, students outside and around Montreal. Joseph, who lives with his brother in a farmhouse in St-Bonaventure, also plans to open an arthropod learning centre in nearby Drummondville, which he hopes to have up and running by the summer of 2004 at the latest. His dream is to travel the world and take photos of insects, spiders and all bugs great and small.

In the meantime, however, the laidback and soft-spoken Joseph has been keeping a large collection of the things in his house. A space next to his bedroom has been converted into a self-contained, if somewhat crowded, arthropod display area.

“Right now, tarantula-wise, I have 300 to 500,” he says. “There’s some coming and going every week. I get them from all over, from the Internet, you know.” He orders them mainly from Europe, because of customs and transportation regulations that make importing wildlife from the States prohibitively expensive. “It’s like a third of the price, ordering from Europe.”

The collection room is warm, with the temperature steady around 24 degrees Celsius. A mounted light rack illuminates a floor-to-ceiling shelving unit, stacked with containers, each housing a single, big, hairy tarantula. A wooden, hollowed armoire is home to a half-dozen Indian jungle nymphs, gorgeous, bright green stick insects that span halfway from Joseph’s hand to his elbow. Other containers house giant cockroaches and itty-bitty arachnid hatchlings, a few months old and smaller than a pinky nail. They are not as cute as kittens.

Looks, not personality

Admittedly, arthropods, even tarantulas, aren’t the most exciting pets to keep. By and large, they kind of just sit there, not doing much. The best time to check out tarantulas is during their weekly feeding time, usually on Tuesdays, when they feast on a diet of roaches, crickets and frozen mice. Otherwise, as pets, Joseph could have more fun with his two dogs, five cats, budgie and collection of chickens.

Asked what he likes best about his multi-legged charges, Joseph says, “Well, they don’t make much noise, they don’t take up much room, they don’t smell and you can have a wide diversity of them in a small place.”

Are they affectionate? No.

Do they have personalities? No.

Do they even have names? No.

“Basically, I don’t manipulate them,” he says. “When you have a fish, you don’t take the fish out of the tank to show it to your friends. Well, that’s what I think. Anyway, there aren’t many species that are considered docile that you can handle.” He then points out a tarantula with prominent blue fangs.

“You can’t touch this one,” he says. “It’s not that it’s poisonous, but until you know whether you’re allergic to the venom or not, well, you never know.” He has yet to be bitten, but thinks that it’s inevitable. “I presume it will happen one day. It’s hard to work here every day without having an accident.”

He has no first aid kit, but he does know what to do in case he is bitten: “Take some aspirin and call the doctor. There’s nothing you can do.”

Death in small bites

Joseph points out that tarantulas don’t, in fact, have to poison their prey before they devour them. The venom is more like insurance to make sure the job is well done, and not the active agent that kills. “It’s a misconception,” he says. “Because of their size, and the size of their fangs, they kill their prey mechanically. They don’t need venom. Some species have fangs almost an inch long, so when they go through something, there’s not much life left. So they don’t need venom as much as a black widow, which is a very tiny spider.” He then picks up a plastic, see-through box containing one of the world’s most fearsome arachnids: the Mexican black widow.

It is indeed tiny. No more than a quarter-inch or so long, and maybe spanning an inch or two from toe to opposite toe, this doesn’t look like a beast that would strike terror in the hearts of men. Again, Joseph says this crawling horror is non-lethal to humans—by and large.

“It won’t kill you,” he says. “The venom is 15 times more toxic than a cobra’s, but the amount of venom injected is really ridiculously small.” A brief lesson is nevertheless illuminating: “Most of the people who’ve died from bites lived in the southern USA, back when people used to have outhouses. Black widows hang in dark and damp places, and usually guys would die because they’d go in the outhouse and let their balls drop. They’d get bitten on the scrotum and die from that. But it hasn’t happened much since people got indoor toilets.”

Ultimate dinner date

Spider sex is also violent and not particularly romantic, either. “It’s mechanical,” Joseph says. “The male first makes a web, and then he puts the sperm on it. With his pedipalp—which are like two little syringes—he grabs the sperm and then he runs for a female. When he eventually finds a female, he has to put the sperm from his pedipalp into her epigynum, a little pouch the female has on her abdomen. When the female has her ovulation, she lays eggs that go through that.”

Dinner comes after sex. “You know the story about black widows? Well, it’s true for almost all spiders,” Joseph says. “The male has to keep the female’s legs away so he won’t be eaten alive, but most of the time, it produces a better egg sac if the male is eaten.”

Oh really? “Sometimes, if I have three females of a species and only one male, I have to keep my eyes open so the male won’t be eaten. But by experience, I know that the egg sac is always better if she eats him.”

Joseph admits that this particular hobby of his (he is also very interested in cooking and gardening) may be disconcerting to some people. His brother doesn’t mind the bugs, but as for women, “Well, that’s another story,” he sighs. “I’m still single. I’m not looking, but I’m hoping that maybe I can find a girl who’s not too scared of bugs—and doesn’t have too many bugs of her own. I’ve found some who like bugs, but they liked them too much.”

He then turns to his collection of assassin bugs, small, red and black insects crawling over the skull of what may have once been a deer. “These are supposed to have the most painful bites to humans,” he says. “They inject you with a gastric acid, so they basically pre-digest their prey and suck it back in through their little beaks…” :

Vincent Joseph and his amazing collection of bugs big and small will be at the Montreal Insect Show, Nov. 16 and 17, on the 2nd floor of the Centre des sciences de Montréal in the Old Port, at de la Commune and St-Laurent. The exhibit will be open from 9am–5pm. Entry is $5, $2 for kids under 14