Pics that relate to charley skedaddle10/31/2023 Was it Greek, as John Hotten argued in his Dictionary of Modern Slang in 1874, from skedannumi, to “retire tumultuously”, perhaps “set afloat by some Harvard professor”? It sounds plausible, but probably not. Where it comes from is almost totally obscure. It crossed the Atlantic astonishingly quickly, being recorded in the Illustrated London News in 1862 and then being put in the mouth of a young lady character by Anthony Trollope in his novel The Last Chronicle of Barset in 1867: “ ‘Mamma, Major Grantly has - skedaddled.’ ‘Oh, Lily, what a word!’ ” However, it quickly moved into civilian circles with the broader sense of leaving in a hurry. The last lines of the lyric are “He who fights and runs away, / May live to run another day.”" Its first appearance in print, in the New York Tribune of 10 August 1861, made this clear: “No sooner did the traitors discover their approach than they ‘skiddaddled’, (a phrase the Union boys up here apply to the good use the seceshers make of their legs in time of danger).”Ī satirical musical item from 1862 in which the pseudonymous author is using the newly fashionable slang term to point his message. The focus of all the early examples is the War without doubt it started out as military slang with the meaning of fleeing the battlefield or retreating hurriedly. Out of the blue, it became fashionable in 1862, with lots of examples appearing in American newspapers and books. What we do know for certain is that it suddenly appears at the beginning of the Civil War. There are plenty of predators too.This archetypal American expression - meaning to run away, scram, leave in a hurry or escape - has led etymologists a pretty dance in trying to work out where it comes from. That's not the only threat to those roaming males. They need to skedaddle because their love interest might decide to eat them for dinner. "If they're quick enough, they're able to get away and run and try and find another mate." "They're going to do their little dance and drum set, hopefully have a successful mate," he says. Once they find a potential paramour they perform an odd courtship ritual where they tap out a rhythm with their legs to draw the female out of her burrow. So if you're getting bit by a tarantula, it's because it's on you or in your hands."ĭozens of male spiders wander along and near the sides of the road looking for females. "Their fangs are face down into the dirt at all times. "All the scary bits are on the bottom of the tarantula," he says. And they aren't aggressive unless you try to grab them the wrong way. Haselhuhn says tarantula bites can really hurt, but their venom is only about as bad as a bee sting. "So I'm just gonna slowly edge him into a little container because I don't want to get bit or anything like that." "So right now he's trying to be big and scary, even though he's about as heavy as a quarter," he says. I've got to jump out and do my best Steve Irwin and grab it, wrestle it." he jokes, as he squats next to the tarantula. "We got a good spider sighting right here. Tarantula researcher Dallas Haselhuhn talks to festival goers at a stop on a Tarantula Trek bus tour in the Comanche National Grassland just south of La Junta "If you don't find them out south, you can get one custom here and they won't crawl all over you and they won't die," she says.Īlong with a human hairy legs contest, an eight-legged race, food and other fun stuff, the festival has an education component, too. Then there's the furry artificial souvenir tarantulas. "We do custom T-shirts, of course, the tarantula fest buttons," she says. "Never did I think that they would be a tourism draw," she says.īut hundreds of people from all over Colorado and nearby states showed up for La Junta's second annual tarantula celebration, held last weekend.įestival goers got to cheer for their favorite homemade tarantula parade floats and costumes, kids got their faces and arms painted with rainbow colored spiders and bugs, and checked out festival organizer Angela Ayala's booth to pick up some spidery swag. That's something the city's tourism director, Pamela Denahy, didn't imagine as a kid growing up here. So much, that little La Junta is aiming for the title: Tarantula Capital Of The World. LaPage's reaction to the big hairy spiders isn't uncommon. It's tarantula mating season around here and La Junta, a city of about 7,300 capitalizes on the spiders' season of romance with an annual tarantula festival.
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