Hi! I currently work at the Liberty Nature Center where I am the Assistant Facilities Manager. I love all spiders and tarantulas. All tarantulas are spiders, but not all spiders are tarantulas. I am in college for Animal Health and Behavior with a concentration in Wildlife Ecology.

One of my hobbies is I collect Tarantulas. I currently have 16. I am slowly getting my collection back up. My favorite genus is Aphonopelma, and you can find them in the United States. I am known as the crazy tarantula lady and have had people bring me their unwanted ones. I think my pride and joy of my collection is my Theraphosa Stirmi which is the Burgundy Goliath Birdeater. The biggest Tarantula in the world. When grown they can reach the size of a 12-inch dinner plate. (There has been some debate whether or not the T. stirmi or the T. blondi is the biggest in the world, because in 1965 the T. blondi got the world record as the biggest, but it is up for debate since people have been misidentifying these two species for many years). Also, when I say the biggest tarantula in the world, I do not mean spiders in general. If you want to know the biggest spider in the world, then the T. stirmi is not it. The biggest spider in the world is actually the Heteropoda maxima, or the Giant Huntsman Spider. See this is why I should not even get started on tarantulas. :D