a tribute to spiders

We had a fairly hilarious, fairly disheartening MTV Real World moment in the MHI house today. We were all hanging around since it was pouring rain and there was nowhere to go, nothing to do—motos don’t go in the rain, and anyway it was Saturday. Someone spied a spider and everyone freaked out (Glenda, Ninotte, Melinda, Marianne, Ena, Tata)....

I pointed out calmly that it isn’t poisonous and is in fact helpful in eating the pesky malaria/dengue-carrying insects and other actually scary or annoying pests.Alas, in their irrational panic, Ninotte was encouraged to kill it. She took off her shoe and lunged at it. I literally jumped on her and was actually wrestling with her. She overpowered me and whacked the beautiful tarantula (endangered in some parts) into oblivion. I ran to the bathroom and stayed there for five minutes or so—busying myself with brushing my teeth, hand-washing, etc…. I heard Ninotte call out that she was sorry and that she couldn’t help it. I came out to grab the keys to go up to the clinic—still upset and not really wanting to face them. We had a last tense talk on the way out—each side justifying their opinion—that they supposedly get bitten while they sleep sometimes—being their only reason—mine being that I’ve never been bitten by spiders here, yet have had a million other insect bites and would appreciate the work of the spider in killing those bugs. Not to mention its other values on the planet. I went to the dome and worked on other things for several hours, including an appropriate insect relocator for the house. J haha, ohhhhhh the drama

Mind you—I have no problem with killing the mice and rats who are actually breeding and bringing disease into our kitchen/garden, destroying things in the house including clinic supplies, etc. But the cliché, irrational fear of spiders (the vast majority of which are not poisonous to humans) is intolerable to me. Please—I lived in New Mexico where there are saucer-sized tarantulas that people swerve to miss in the road and black widows that dominate homes/garages. Yeah, sometimes people get bitten by spiders, and that’s certainly good to avoid--especially by poisonous ones, but contrary to popular belief, even being bitten by a brown recluse or black widow doesn't automatically mean death or decay! Thus: I cannot condone the killing of such beautiful, artful, and helpful creatures....especially in this case as it was not of the lethal/limb-destroying variety.

Upstairs at the clinic, my mood was vastly improved by 3 adorable little girls—Anis, Marojolie, and Naiko—who came over from the tent camp adjacent (or rather the squatting grounds upon the clinic’s grounds) to talk to me. I love how unafraid they are to talk to me, even though I suck at their language and they know it. They played with my hair and kissed my head and giggled a lot, which was awesome. As they rolled all over me, I repeated in my head: I do not believe in scabies, I do not believe in scabies, I do not believe in scabies)…

(Yes I see some irony in my distaste for the work of scabies mites vs. spiders, but I’ve been bitten by both, and I’d take a necrotic spider bite (rare anyway) over a tenacious bunch of scabies mites which can result in a several weeks/months long battle any day!)