Texas wildlife

I'd been living in Texas a couple of years when my friend Lyndon, a native Texan, first told me about the Texas barking spider. People outside of the state have generally never encountered or even heard of one. This rude critter has the habit of crawling around under the dinner table and making a sound suspiciously like that of a person passing gas. When I told my roommate Phil about this, he was skeptical, but every once in a while we have to chase one off to eat in peace.

Mexican food especially seems to bring them out, and in my time here we've come across some mighty fine Mexican dishes, like tacoritos, as well as everybody's favorites, from burritos to fajitas to tacos. A few months ago, I stopped eating much besides salads for weeks on end and managed to lose a couple belt notches. Coincidentally, we didn't hear a whole lot of barking in that time, but I have a feeling these spiders are seasonal. Hopefully, we've heard the last of them, but if they're anything like the sugar ants that still turn up around the drains occasionally, I wouldn't count on it.