Arachnophilia: The Menagerie Expands

Normally, it's hard to get Ian out of bed on a weekday morning, but this morning, he got up and got dressed on his own, and headed straight out the front door. This time, it's love.

For Ian has a new pet - a big and rather scary-looking spider. Adults who have seen the pet have warned that it could be something awful like a brown recluse, even though we technically don't have those spiders in New England. In any case, Ian isn't intimidated; he handles it like any other pet, without any repercussions thus far.

It all happened after church yesterday, like so many bug acquisitions. While the children were out playing, he made the discovery, and headed straight to the styrophoam coffee cup supply in the church hall, to construct his usual provisional enclosure for new bugs, prior to their interstate transport northwards to their new home. In fact, his colleague, Kristen, came along at one point, while I was talking to a grown-up, and chirped a general announcemenet: "There's a stink-bug! Somebody should tell Ian!" Telling Ian is the thing to do when you find a bug.

Last week, some girls found a stick-bug - a rare find! - and instantly reported it to Ian. Ian took the bug home in the same kind of enclosure, in spite of a few stops on the way home, and, when we arrived in the driveway, lovingly opened the styrophoam "cage" and liberated "Stickers," under a bush in front. He announced that he was letting it go so it would live, but now it would be right near us.

In short order after Kristen's announcement, Ian had created two bug domiciles from would-be coffee cups - one for himself, an one for Kristen. When we got home, Ian set to work on creating a longer-term home, out of a coke bottle, and handed me a steak-knife an a bottle cap, asking me to put a hole in the cap so that the spider could breathe, which I did. Yesterday evening, he conducted a first search for food for his new pet, and I helped a bit, at his request, but it was too dark to find anything. It involved rock-lifting, to try to find bugs in their usual habitat. This morning's search was a bit of followup.

The Vignette of the Morning was one of Ian sweetly, casually guiding the spider with one hand around its running-course on the periphery of his other hand, and commenting:

"He still won't eat anything. I couldn't find any bugs today."

As I came upstairs to type this, Ian called me back down, to run his dilemma by me: they're studying spiders at school, and when he told his science teacher about his gift for finding spider, she encouraged him to bring one in the next time that he finds it. Mommy wasn't sure the school as a whole would be alright with that, and Ian invited me in as the tie-breaker, or something along those lines. We resolved that he will seek permission today, which should give the school plenty of time to prepare for the arrival of new wildlife, since science class won't be until Wednesday. They're doing a module on spiders, which is one reason why there's so much intellectual enthusiasm on his part, and potential tolerance on the part of the school.

As Ian and I stepped outside to wait for the bus, Ian lectured me on the fact that spiders' silk is actually stronger than steel. I didn't know that spiders *made* silk: I thought that was just a silk-worm thing... And even spiders that don't make webs still can make silk. And the abdomen - or adbomen, I think he called it, "is where the magic happens." "What magic?" I asked, in my standard, clueless adult way. The magic is eggs and silk, and one other wonder, but I forget which.

As we headed toward the end of the driveway, Ian asked me, "Daddy, if you find any bugs, can you feed them to the spider?"

(October 23-24, 2011)