When I was ten years old, and spent hours every day poisoning my brain in front of a television, Marlin Perkins tried to convince me I needed the filthy things. Even then I knew the old guy was full of ka-ka, or poop, or whatever word I substituted for excrement when I was ten years old. Now that I'm on the old down-slope (and accelerating wildly, it seems), I still watch my share of nature shows on TV; I subscribe to several respected magazines; I even understand many of the big words they use. And I am sick to death of hearing about how, if it weren't for our "friends" the spiders, we'd all be up to our collective wazoo in house-flies, or some other similarly terrifying vermin. Houseflies!! I'd rather swim naked through a lake of houseflies than find a single, smallish spider on my forearm! Haven't these clowns ever heard of fly swatters? Or Raid?? Great slogan: "Raid Kills Bugs Dead!!" Well, what exactly is a fly, if it isn't a BUG? And they die really easy, too. They can't take anything! One good shot of Raid, pal, and the biggest, meanest housefly ever born goes belly-up. Right now, and forever. And it's not like their buddies are going to gang up on you and get even! Then, by late September, they get so old, and fat, and slow, you can smack 'em by hand and squish 'em right through your window screens. Right? Haven't you ever done that? So what's the big deal? For this I need spiders? I am not buying that, not for one second! When I was a very little boy, as in two or three years old, I used to sit in the outhouse behind our summer cottage, pick the spiders off the walls, and blithely pull their legs off. I would then display these crippled creatures to my horrified mother, cheerfully announcing "Wook, Mommy, I bwoke him!" Bwoke him hell; I destwoyed him! Yeahh!! Now there was a kid with cojones!! So what happened? (You ask.) When did Boy-Who-Bwakes-and-Destwoys-Awachnids turn into Wimp-Who-Wuns-Away? I'm not sure. But I do know that if I were in that same situation today (i.e. outhouse, mother, spider-on-wall, etc.) I'd rip out my Mommy's lungs and smash him with them, before I'd lay one finger on that spider! Like most arachnophobes, I'm absolutely fascinated by the little monsters. I've been to the Smithsonian several times, and really enjoyed most of their exhibits. The Air and Space Museum is a particular favorite; another is their collection of live spiders. I can stand for hours next to a display case full of tarantulas; I'll even tap on the glass, to see how they react. Some are much more aggressive than others; they'll rear up on their back legs, like little ponies, and dare you to mess with them. I'm all nerves of steel as long as there's plexiglass between me and him. If that glass barrier developed so much as a hairline crack I'd be in another area code in two seconds flat. If, God forbid, one of them got loose....... no, I don't think I'll pursue that line. My bowels are starting to cramp. Cable television is a great source of useless but interesting information. Just last night I watched a terrific science show about - what else? - spiders. I sat in dazed disbelief and watched an arachnologist play with some hairy monster the size of a manhole cover. He loved that thing! Of course, my mind was made up about him as soon as I heard that he was an arachnologist. Is that a great word, or what? Wouldn't you just love it if one of your kids said he wanted to grow up to be an arachnologist? Anyway, this yutz had this spider scrambling up and down his arm, while he sat and talked about what a neat animal it was. Animal?? Hold the phone, Jethro. A cat is an animal. Puppy dogs and bunny rabbits are animals. Even a shrew is an animal, if you don't mind the slightly cranky disposition. A spider, on the other hand, is a monstrosity; an aberration. And what was the point of the TV program? They thought we needed to know about all the benefits man can derive from the silk and the venom of spiders. Yup. Now I've been enlightened. (Why don't you go and change into something more comfortable, my dear, like that little spider-silk ensemble from Victoria's Secret, while I mix up a batch of arachno-martinis. Then we can play Russian Roulette, just to get the old juices flowing; kinda like foreplay. What's life without a little risk?) You see, what they fail to grasp is that I honestly don't care if wounds heal more quickly wrapped in spider-silk. I don't care if the stuff is stronger than steel; I want my car made from the real stuff!! They almost had me going when they mentioned the potential medicinal benefits of the venom. Almost. Then it dawned on me; this is the age of technology. We don't need spiders to produce their poison. We could probably screw around in their DNA or something, and come up with genetically-engineered ducks that urinated spider venom! And who the heck would be afraid of a duck? I lived in the beautiful state of Florida for a few months, many years ago. Florida is arachno-heaven. The only animals in Florida with fewer than eight legs are humans and alligators. I swear I saw my neighbor's dog spinning a web. I moved there because it was a cheap place to live. It was also a cheap place to work. I ended up working about ninety hours a week just to make the rent. But I digress. I was working as a rent-a-cop at a Southland Corporation distribution warehouse, one of the biggest single-story buildings I have ever seen. Once an hour I had to make a tour of the outside of the place, to make sure all the doors were locked. Each door had a low-wattage light bulb over it; between doors, it was blacker than pitch. Halfway between two doors, I felt a little tickle on my left arm, up near the shoulder. It was much too dark to see anything, so I waited until I reached the next doorway. I pulled up my sleeve to brush away what I thought was a beetle or firefly, when - what to my wondering eyes should appear - a black widow!! And the little &$%@(%$ bit me!! She was little, too; couldn't have been bigger than a dime. I didn't panic; I even had enough presence of mind to brush her off, as opposed to smacking the daylights out of her. (Don't ever smack the daylights out of a black widow; you'll absorb enough toxin to terminate a water buffalo. You're welcome.) Well, maybe I should have given some thought to smacking the daylights out of her, because she proceeded to get away from me!! Boy, was I .......ummmm... sick. Yeah, that's the word. I think it took all of about ten seconds to hit me. My head went rapidly south, passing my belly, which seemed to be racing north. I vomited everything in my abdomen, including most of my stomach, spleen, intestines, liver, belt buckle. And I stayed very sick, for a very long time. After three days or so, when the shock had worn off, along with the chills, the fever, the nausea, and the really nasty mood, I was left with a hot, raised welt that looked like someone had slugged me with an iron pipe! And that was from a little spider. I know; black widows are poisonous way out of proportion to their diminutive size. I'd have been safer if that had been a tarantula on my arm. Well, let's just say I wouldn't have suffered as long as I did. I probably wouldn't have felt my head hit the ground. The point is, I didn't need that spider, and I don't believe I need any spider. |
