Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Pigs, Spiders & Crickets

Monday evening I happened to pick up one of my favorite books: The Essays of E.B. White. In that book is an essay entitled, "Death of a Pig", which I have probably read a dozen times. It's the story of farm life, the raising of a pig, and the loss of losing one that would, otherwise, have been dinner.

We don't raise our own meals today. We just get them out of the package and the can. Our animals are for petting only.

A few weeks ago my son came to me begging for a tarantula. "Why do you want a tarantula?" I asked.

"I've always wanted a tarantula," he told me.

"There's no way I allowing a big hairy spider in the house," I said. "No way."
Of course, we have a spider now, a big hairy spider. It eats live crickets. Cockroaches. Anything that moves. It crawls in its cage in the middle of the night and hisses.

I still have a fear of getting up in the middle of the night, walking across the tile floor of the bathroom and feeling something big and hairy squish between my toes as a bring my weight down and . . . .

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