What do tarantulas mean to you, and how did you get to the hobby?

[boina]

I just love animals - all animals, with very few exceptions (mosquitos, fleas...) and I've always had all kinds of pet animals. My mother once joked if I ever turned up with an elephant she'd throw me out (That was when I converted part of her backyard into a large mink enclosure). I kept phasmids and native true spiders and snails for a while among all my vertebrate pets, but somehow it never occurred to me to keep tarantulas. Then one day I saw some artsy pictures on the web of some of a G. rosea in a doll house and I decided I needed such a spider, too, and that was that.