I was about to start a game of racquetball with my friend Rodrigo Orozco when his cell phone beeped. The text message was from an unknown caller. “I’ve been bitten by a tarantula. What do I do?” were the words on the small screen.
“Do nothing,” Orozco texted back, “Mexican tarantulas are harmless.”
After our game, I asked my friend, also known as Tarantula Man, how his private war on tarantula poaching was going. Years ago, Orozco had noted how Mexico’s endangered tarantula population was being decimated by poachers hunting down the creatures in the wild in order to sell them abroad – illegally, of course. After examining a wide range of options he decided the best response would be to flood the market with tarantulas raised in captivity.
“I have been raising tarantulas for many years,” Orozco told me, “My sanctuary (UMA) is now the largest in the world for Mexican tarantulas. In fact, we are the only organization in the world legally exporting them.”
In the last year, Orozco says he has exported 2,600 legal tarantulas, finally seeing some success in his goal of saturating the market and driving poachers out of business.
Orozco still has 4,000 baby tarantulas at his home in Guadalajara. Because these arachnids are long-lived and grow very slowly, his pet project has required a lot of patience … and expense. He receives no economic help from the government and reports that it costs him 1, 000 pesos –over a period of five years – to raise a tarantula which will later sell for only 300 pesos.
Nevertheless, Orozco is holding firmly to his plan, which is to eventually produce 8,000 tarantulas per year, to ensure the survival of the species in the wild here in Mexico.
“Mexican tarantulas are the most popular in the world for pets,” says Orozco. “They have an especially sweet disposition and are not at all aggressive, even though many people buy them to scare their mothers-in-law. Actually, their coloring makes them one of the prettiest spiders you could ever hope to see. Unfortunately, their system for reproducing is very complicated and poaching can literally wipe them out in a given area.”
Since tarantulas only eat live things, Orozco raises 10,000 crickets per week to feed them. Financing his operation is difficult because, he says, “let’s face it, everyone is interested in projects to protect cute animals, but not many are worried about creatures like bats and tarantulas, although they are the ones who really need help when it comes to public relations.”
Orozco, however, has done much as far as PR for tarantulas goes. His presentations are lively and interesting and he always brings along live tarantulas for people to meet, as well as several other curious – but totally harmless – creatures like vinegaroons and giant millipedes.
Orozco will give a Power Point presentation – and speak in English and Spanish – at the Yacht Club (Club Nautica La Floresta) in La Floresta, Ajijic, on Thursday, April 11, 8 p.m. and in Guadalajara on Tuesday, April 16, 8 p.m. at his tarantula sanctuary, located at Avenida Mexico 3076, between Beethoven and Juan Palomar Arias, across from the Galeria del Calzado. A donation of 100 pesos to help keep the sanctuary going would be greatly appreciated. For more information, call him at 333-968-7805 (cell).
To learn more about Orozco’s work, just search the net for “Rodrigo Orozco” and “tarantulas.”