I absolutely love critters. Insects and creepy crawlies fascinate me. I probably should have been an entomologist or a herpetologist. My husband, on the other hand, is not as smitten with the bug world and has accused me a few times over the years of not being sensitive to those around me who do not share my affinity for what some apparently consider pests. In his honor, I will share with you three short stories of when I admittedly went too far.
Story #1: The Spider Debacle
Just after John and I were married, I had a rather large aquarium with Tiger Oscars—omnivorous South American cichlids that grow up to about a foot long. Omnivorous is what you should key into here, because that’s my favorite part about these amazing creatures. I mean, who wants a boring goldfish that literally eats flakes for dinner when you can have a fish with personality and an exciting appetite for flesh? In addition to offering them a regular diet of other fish, I would also weekly turn up rocks to find worms and beetles and other tasty snacks for them. They apparently got to know the vibration of my gait and would meet me at the side of the tank to receive whatever delicacy I was bringing to them. John didn’t mind that I did that, but he did request that my offering never be spiders. He hates spiders.
One day when my niece was in town and I wanted to entertain her, we went looking for food for my big, hungry fish. It just so happens that Nashville, Tennessee, has some of the largest wolf spiders you’ve ever seen, and there was a Goliath of a specimen on our back porch that day. I knew my fish would find him absolutely delicious and it was just this once, so I caught him in a fish net and brought him into the house—very securely detained, I might add—where John and his also non-critter-loving mother were in the living room. “Look what we found!” I said as I held him up in the net that was twisted closed. They were not amused and even a little, shall I say, terrified. “I promise I’ll just throw it into the tank and he’ll be gone in a flash,” I said. “It’ll be fun to watch.”
John and his mother hesitantly agreed after I promised them it would not get loose. I lifted the lid on the aquarium, untwisted the net, turned it upside down, and flicked the furry beast into the water with my fingers. “It’s dinner time, boys!” I proclaimed. Only, the little Houdini didn’t go down quietly. He took advantage of something we bug lovers know as surface tension and landed on the water instead of in it. Then he disappeared right before our eyes.
The fish stared at the top of the water, then turned their bodies to look at me, as if to ask, “Where did he go?” I had no idea. My niece and I searched for the next hour while my husband and mother-in-law sat in lawn chairs on the back porch, discussing how they might exchange me for a more suitable wife for John. Finally, and much to my relief, we found the spider, who had flipped upside down and camouflaged himself into a ball in the corner of the lid. Presently, he was an hors d’oeuvre, and I never brought another spider into the house. Well, not that house anyway.
Story #2: Lizardpalooza
Later, when we had three sons and they had adopted my love of the animal world, we bought the boys a bearded dragon. Well, actually we bought two bearded dragons because my school of thought is that the only thing better than one critter is two or more since they might breed. Before long, we saw that they were indeed doing their best to make babies, and so I started to read up on what that might entail. Wow! One bearded dragon could apparently lay up to twenty eggs at once, but they need to be incubated. So we bought a reptobator (an incubator for reptile eggs) to be ready for that. Then I read that each baby needs its own enclosure. Hmmm, that would take up a lot of space and might mean that the boys would have to move into the same room so we could make the whole upstairs loft a giant terrarium. But that would be crazy—something only a fanatic would do. I moved some furniture around just in case.
When the female started to act like the book said she would just before laying eggs, I bought every aquarium and terrarium I could find at yard sales, resale shops, and online until I had twenty single lizard habitations ready to go. Then she laid twenty eggs, just like the book said, and I put them into the reptobator that fit nicely in the corner. Then she laid twenty more! Upon closer reading, I discovered that a pregnant bearded dragon may lay up to three rounds of eggs from one breeding. So, before long, we had sixty eggs! We had to move all the human children downstairs after all.
John was less than excited that I was not better prepared. Not only had I turned one entire floor of our house into a lizard den, but I also hadn’t taken into account how expensive it was going to be to feed the little guys. Each one could eat up to a hundred newly hatched crickets every day, and those are not easy to come by, unless, you know, you hatch them yourself. Yes, I also became a cricket farmer overnight, and that was the rub. Those little buggers were hard to contain and ended up in our walls. It was like perpetual camping under the stars in our house. And, oh, the smell!
In the end, we sold all the lizards and fumigated for the crickets. But, even with all the surprises and challenges, this still remains one of my favorite “homeschool projects” of all time. I think our displaced kids thought it was pretty cool too, but you would have to ask them to be sure.
Story #3: Hermit Crab Highwire
And finally, we come to the present day. We live smack dab in the middle of Costa Rica in the hills and wanted to see the ocean, so we drove to the shore. Of course the kids loved the waves and even threw a line in to fish, but I meanwhile combed the sand for critters and found that there is no shortage of hermit crabs on the beach at night. I had the kids—who are not really kids anymore—help me collect a few of them along with saltwater and sand to make a suitable habitat back at the house. We put them in a huge plastic container with plenty of fresh things that crabs eat and filled it just high enough with sand that they could surely not climb out—surely not.
I could see it on John’s face the following morning when I came into the living room for our morning coffee time together. “I have a picture on my phone for you,” he said, “and I want you to tell me what you see here.” It was a photo of the very curtains we were sitting next to.
“Well, it looks like our curtains,” I said.
“Zoom in,” he said.
“Well, it looks like our curtain rod.”
“Zoom in more,” he said, a little less patiently.
“Oh man!” There were tiny claws gripping the metal pole and poking around from behind it. “It’s a hermit crab on our curtain rod! How did he get there?” He had apparently jumped over the side of the sandpit, crawled over to the window, climbed up the fabric, and wrapped his little claws around the rod, and was just hanging there. John had heard the spine-chilling scritch-scratch sound on the metal just as the sun was coming up. We rescued him before he fell to his death and looked for ways to keep that from happening again.
Well, I’m here to tell you that if you buy hermit crabs as pets and they tell you to put a screen top on the cage, it’s not just a suggestion. They had pushed the sand into the corner and built an escape ramp. I’ve also since watched them stand on each other’s backs like the Musicians of Bremen to help each other out of the cage. Everyone eventually got used to seeing them randomly cruise across our floor on their way to the backyard. It was fun while it lasted, and we got to see them grow and change shells a few times. We even surprised several of the locals with the fact that Americans actually pay to keep these critters as pets, but we eventually set them free.
So, I tell you these stories in part to entertain you and to encourage you to enjoy the little things in life that you enjoy, even if, and probably especially if, it’s not the career path you’ve chosen. Just make sure your spouse is on board and that you read up carefully on what you’re getting into. Though this may seem like a random offering to my usually-about-the-kids-in-Malawi blog, it’s really not. I have so many ideas for our school there, and one of them has always been to introduce the kids up close and personal to the nature that surrounds them. They live in what appears to be a desert wasteland because they have not been taught to cultivate the land and to study and protect the wildlife in their area. Since we lived there, I’ve had a vision for a wildlife center where plants and animals would be cared for, studied, and on display for locals to learn about and appreciate what God has given them. I expect that at least one child in our program will identify with my love for the critter world, and I look forward to helping that kid create the most amazing wildlife center Malawi has ever seen.
