Pet Day! Forty Years Later

Tomorrow would be Pet Day at school. I was not enthused. Though our farm had many animals, none were suitable to take along to school.

Morosely, I went about my afterschool chores, wishing I had something to take along. As I carried wood to the furnace room and stacked it along the wall, I noticed the plentiful cellar spiders. A grin tugged at the corner of my mouth. Who said a pet had to be warm-blooded and furry?

Selecting an old jar from the can shelves, I used a nail to punch several tiny air holes in the lid. Though the slender brown spiders were everywhere, they were so frail that it was hard to get one into my jar without killing it. Not to mention their peculiar habit of shaking violently when I bumped their webs.

Many years later, I’m sure my teacher wouldn’t be surprised to learn that spiders still fascinate me. I still pause on a dewy morning to look into a tunnel web on the boxwood bush to see if I can spot its occupant.

Outside at night with a light, I’ll flash about, looking for the glittering eyes of a wolf spider. And on fall mornings, I’ll pause in hanging up laundry to watch little spiderlings float by on their gauzy parachutes.

Can spiders think? Grabbing a handful of small rubber bands to use in bunching herbs, I dropped a band. It landed in a spider web in the corner. Instantly a spider darted out to see what had arrived for breakfast.

I watched him circle the rubber band. He’s trying to figure out what it is, I smiled to myself.

Plop. As he completed his trip around the foreign object, the band dropped to the floor. Obviously, he had been cutting the web as he went. As I resumed my duties, I imagined him mending the hole in his web.

But my favorite spider was the one I watched one day while filling the horse’s water trough. As I hung the water hose into the cut-down barrel, the water swirled round and round, creating a small white-crested wave.

A vertical movement caught my eye. It was a spider descending from the dusty trusses overhead. There was no doubt he was letting himself down for a drink.

“Look out,” I said as the wave caught him and swirled him once around the circumference of the barrel.

Zip. He pulled himself safely a foot above the water’s surface.

“That was close,” I told him.

A moment later, he descended again for another exhilarating ride.

With regret, I turned off the water after his second excursion. It was a pity to put an end to his “white water rafting,” but the water trough was full!