Monday, January 23, 2006

Did I Ever Tell Y'all About the Tarantula?

Eddie. That was his name. Though, considering how large he was and how long he lived, I venture that Eddie was not a he but a she. No matter. Eddie belonged to one of the most delicious looking farm boys you ever saw. Those of you from the Midwest probably already have a mental image, kind of tall, kind of lanky, hair the color of dry corn, green John Deere hat sitting on the top of his head like he'd just lifted the bill to wipe some sweat and not bothered to set it back down. Brown Carhartt coat, gun rack in the back window of his pickup truck. He was a freshman at the U of I. And poor Eddie was being subjected, frequently, to freshman boys filling his tank full of pot smoke. Not to mention that the U of I will let you stick your hand in a cow's stomach* long enough to figure out how to wiggle in such a way to cause said cow to fart on the Man from GM as he walks by but it won't let you keep a tarantula in your dorm room. I already had a snake, so I guess it seemed logical that I could also then take the tarantula. Which was fine, because except for the rare occasions when he would pull out all his butt hair and then crack open his butt skin and wiggle out of his exoskeleton, thus leaving a perfectly hollow shell of a spider you had to fish out of the tank** and the few times when you might actually catch him eating a cricket, he didn't do much. Well, not much that we saw. For one day, Eddie chewed his way through the nylon screen at the top of the tank and escaped. On the one hand, this sucked as the cute farm boy no longer had any reason to come over. On the other hand, once word of the escape got out, no church busybodies came over either. We all presumed that Eddie died. After all, the house was a crappy dangerous place. My mom repeatedly fell through the porch and above the TV dangled some weird mold stalactites. And tarantulas aren't native to Illinois. How long could he last? A year, America, a whole year. When my parents moved from the house, while I was away in college, they found Eddie under the entertainment center in the living room, fat, happy, and alive. Mom swears that she thinks he was living under there eating mice. It could be. Sadly, after all that freedom, he never readjusted to life in the tank, and shortly died, probably of boredom. *via a hole they had cut in the side of the cow and kept open with some kind of plastic plug. **It occurs to me that this may explain why the tiny cat pulls her butt hair out. Perhaps she's trying to molt.

7 Comments:

Blogger DMartin said...

Spiders are not pets! They are evil beings sent from Hell to torment and terrify me! Evil creatures, thank God for bug spray!

1/23/2006 06:29:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I used to have a pet tarantula. He escaped from the half-ass aquarium I brought him to school in.
Evidently the loosely place screen on the top was no match for his arachnid cunning. It is my fervent wish that he is still living behind the cupboard of the Silverado Canyon Elementary School, or wherever he wound up hiding from mouth breathing fourth graders.

1/23/2006 06:52:00 PM  
Blogger grandefille said...

MY. EYES.

~ shudder ~

I loves ya, aunt b, but ...

~ shudder ~

1/24/2006 09:00:00 AM  
Blogger The Scarlet Pervygirl said...

They cut a hole in a LIVE COW and kept it open with a plastic plug?

WHY?

1/24/2006 11:42:00 AM  
Blogger Aunt B said...

Why Scarlet Pervygirl, so they could see what was going on in its stomach, of course. You'll be shocked to learn that what's going on in a cow's stomach is some grass hanging out, milling about, waiting to get off to one of the cow's other stomachs. Why they needed to cut a little porthole in the cow to make this "discovery" I'm not sure.

Anyway, I thought turning the cow into some kind of live fart gun was pretty ingenious. The folks at the UofI did not agree.

Sarcastro, you also used to have a pet tarantula? How odd. Although, I'm sure, like much else when comparing the two of us, yours was nicer but mine was cuter.

1/24/2006 12:07:00 PM  
Blogger theogeo said...

Eddie hung out in the house for a year, just sneaking around?

I just threw up in my mouth.

1/24/2006 04:11:00 PM  
Blogger Bottle Rocket Fire Alarm said...

I used to have a tarantula. I gave her a male name, too. Elijah. I can't recall why right now.

I had long hair at the time and it would always get tangled up when it was crawling on my head. I'd go door to door trying to get somebody to me help free it.

It usually took a while.

1/25/2006 04:42:00 PM  

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