CSI: Critter Scene Investigation

Street Smart Naturalist · Mar 20, 2025 · 6m · transcript

We ventured down to Arizona last week to attend the amazing Tucson Book Festival: 130,000 attendees and 320 authors. It’s a book dork’s idea of heaven.

While down in the desert, we saw two, curious natural history scenes, both worthy of closer investigation and consideration. Unfortunately, both also centered on dead animals my wife and I found on a morning walk on a road.

The first was a tarantula. I assume the spider had ventured out in search of food, perhaps triggered by the rain that had fallen in the night. Since the body was not flat, the spider didn’t appear to have died from being…