Bias and stereotype are a human invention which take on thee worst regressive things at times. For instance, people hate snakes.......and I learned this as a child too. In fact, at the age of 4, I killed a huge mother garter snake and stuffed it into an oil jar.
To this day I still feel awful about it all, as going with the crowd is a most stupid thing to do.
I now have one of thee most healthy pieces of the world as I have frogs galore and snakes even more, including one that is beyond rare, which pleases me so much. I even found a baby snake (non poisonous) in the door of my pick up this week, and I told it, "No, no, you can not be hiding there or you might get hurt."
I talk to most animals as they do understand all you say to them in beta brain wave, and they appreciate being acknowledged by the top of the food chain.
This morning as I was doing my rounds, I stopped to talk to my Mom who was on a lawn chair watching our pets graze, and as it was warm I took my hat off and looked down and uttered something like, "Crap that is a barn spider!"
Yes, there crawling around on the brim of my hat was this tarantula size spider that was a bit too close for my comfort as I just do not trust them, even if I have never gotten bitten by one.
Barn Spiders used to be all over the American world, but with the spraying and lack of barns, they are quite rare. They really are a most hideous looking creature in being brownish ugly, coarse looking and built like a tank.
When we used to kill them they would pop with this ghastly whatever in their abdomen which still makes me wrinkle my nose. They are though one of the great utility spiders and I'm quite fond of them........compared to like those black racers which I hate.
I stayed with my cousins long ago at their lake cabin, and Lord God, that was a horror show in the dark as those fast little black spiders which are in the marsh grass were all over that place, and as we were sleeping on the floor it was a non stop highway running over me and me killing spiders, until I passed out.
I have no idea and do not care to know how many I probably swallowed. I like black racers outside.
I have mentioned that I have some long legged web spiders, which I call packing spiders. They will not survive outside, and I love these spiders as they eat other spiders, and as we came to an understanding, they stopped biting me with a blood poisoning venom, and we get along great as they entertain me, as I usually have some juvenile visiting my keyboard here as I type.
In my youth, I had a most horrid spider bite me. I have no idea exactly what it was, but it was not a brown recluse or black widow as it did not kill me. I must have rolled over on it while sleeping and it bit me a dozen times.........to which I had this dollar sized red welt puff up almost an inch on my back.
My glands swelled up and I got sort of concerned about it.........Mom was not concerned enough for a doctor, but I learned then to love only some types of spiders and the rest, could find Raid or my foot as a cure for their place on this planet.
Somehow, we started getting the American Corn Spider here a few years ago, and I just love them, as they are the pretty version of the ugly Barn Spider. The Corn Spider is so very scary in those thick legs and big fangs, but they are such good neighbors in being that beautiful yellow and black.
They kill locusts at an amazing rate, and when I was picking my Swiss Chard seed, one was in the corn and beans next to what I was harvesting, so I just pushed the web sort of closed like a door, the spider did not mind too much.........I opened it up when I was done, and everyone was quite content.
Granted I have no time for brown recluse, black widow, black tunnel spiders, as they are dangerous, but spiders just delight me from a distance in those wolf spiders which I keep taking outside when they crawl in, and I tell them to not be doing that.......and then those spiders who take on flower colors in being white and pink........there are just so many spiders in this world, but there should be one more to eat potatoe bug larva which would have me going to get bugs for that spider as I served it.
You never know allot of times how common things were a few years and then all of a sudden things disappear, and you start missing even the ghastly things like Barn Spiders.
So I walked back to the barn as the spider crawled around my hat, and into my hat, and I kept close watch so it would not be crawling on me, and when I got to the barn, it liked my hat so much it would not come out........so we negotiated some and it started running around faster inside my hat and finally fell out, to which it found a perfect little hole in the straw to go hide in.
Sometimes I so would love to have the time to just sit and observe things for a few hours, but I no longer have the time with my 16 hour days. I miss so much of the naturalist things like Teddy Roosevelt, of just watching nature, going for walks, and discovering things in my world which are the major things in a small insect world.
To stand on an ant hill as a herd of wild elephant graze a football field away to sitting under an oak listening to those shrews squeal at each other as they race through their leaf tunnels is something this world has robbed from me, and I do not have enough of me to just live life any longer the way it should be.
I guess that is enough of that as air compressors require rewiring and Bibles need reading. I'm blessed with never a dull moment in a life which overflows.
agtG
