Creepy pets

“You killed my baby! ” the woman’s voice on the phone cried in the ear of the man who had sprayed her home for creepy, crawly critters.
The pest control guy froze in disbelief as visions of the end of his career and business flashed before him, “No. This stuff does not harm mammals. It can’t have hurt your baby.”
“It was outside in the bushes on the corner of the house,” she wailed.
“In the bushes? What is your baby?”
“A spider.” A big, fat, juicy garden spider had entertained her with its nightly webs.
Understanding and relief flooded the pest man. “I’m sorry ma’am, but you called me out to kill your pests and spiders are pests.”
The woman immediately canceled the rest of the contract. She refused to have that pest company, or any other, come to her house again. Only for the invasion of water bugs and her husband’s insistence did she relent – once.
When the pest control agent returned to deal with the water bugs, he worked cautiously around the favored spider as he did for a few other customers who liked to watch their spiders at work, but didn’t want termites eating the foundation out from under them. His precautions were in vain – the spider was already dead. The cat had killed it.
Even though his insecticide had not killed the spider, the agent said, “Look if you really like this kind of spider, we see them all the time. I’ll bring you a whole box of them.”
She welcomed him and the box of spiders … but has not relented again about having her house sprayed for bugs, according to the pest man who recently treated our home.
A spider and its web intrigued my new son-in-love. During our first visit to my daughter’s new home, she proudly showed off a huge spider web highlighted against the night sky by the flood light. Her husband and his friend sometimes spent their evenings catching moths attracted by the light, tossing them into the web and watching the spider dash over to zap the free food, she said.
It wasn’t spiders, but ants which totally intrigued one of my granddaughters last summer. She crept along the ground gathering them up in any handy container insisting she was going to be a veterinarian until my husband said, “Oh, I thought you looked like an entomologist.”
“What’s that?”
“A person who studies insects.”
“That’s what I want to be,” her face lit up.
Creeping, crawling creatures fascinate children.
My daughter loved to pet the furriest of caterpillars. When she found one, she would pick it up, let it crawl up her arm or between her hands and stroked its furry back and sides bald. She offered me the pleasure. I smiled, kept my distance and said, “I think you need to let the caterpillar go outside for a rest.”
My son didn’t pet the fuzzy caterpillar he found on the way to his first day of school. He stuck the furry, little teddy bear into his pocket.
As he walked into his classroom door, he proudly announced, “Guess what I have in my pocket?”
“What?” his sweet, little teacher asked.
He reached into his pocket, “A caterpillar!”
She did not miss a beat. From behind her desk she gushed, “That’s marvelous. Why don’t you put it outside to wait for you while we have class.”
He marched proudly over to the door and put his caterpillar on the ground. The caterpillar did not wait.
My son did not notice, he knew where he could find a whole box of other caterpillars to replace it.
(Joan Hershberger is a reporter at the News-Times.)


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