In the spring of 1951, I was a grad student in the Department of Theater Arts at UCLA. I was searching for an idea for a short film to satisfy my MA degree requirements, and hopefully release in some markets to reimburse my costs. And maybe use to get a job. I remembered some modest success I had, as a dedicated amateur, with a short 8mm filmed drama, shot in my backyard, involving two insectivores: a praying mantis and a large orb-weaving spider. The flying mantis blundered into the spider’s web, and an exciting battle ensued. The edited piece elicited numerous favorable comments.
I was influenced by that experience, and even more by an article that I read about Arizona’s desert wildlife that featured “tarantula hawks,” or large Pepsis wasps that prey on tarantulas, stinging and paralyzing them for the wasps’ offspring to consume. There were no photos of the battle, only of the two adversaries. It dawned on me that there would be the “mother of all insect-arachnid battles,” conflicts that occur thousands of times each day in the desert summer, and probably never observed by humans.
Could this be the backbone of a desert story, featuring the two main protagonists – wasp and tarantula – in an interesting surrounding environment of mini-dramas of desert wildlife, flowering cacti, and striking vistas. I thought it could, if I could solve a number of rather difficult problems.
The number one requirement was to locate and employ someone who intimately the behavior of the insects and arachnids, and to some extent the snakes and birds of the Arizona Sonoran Desert. I was a film person, not a naturalist or entomologist. Through enquiries with UCLA personnel, I discovered Robert Crandall, a man with tremendous experience and knowledge of these subjects. He loved spiders, sometimes keeping them as pets. I was quite fortunate to get him to join me in this venture, especially since he had a house and laboratory in the desert near Tucson. How lucky could I get?
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