I have always been fascinated by spiders.
When other girls wanted ponies, I wanted a tarantula.
Not that I wouldn’t have settled for a pony…don’t get me wrong. I am still a girl.
When we were children my brother and I were given a pet mouse each, in a little plastic tank.
My mother was assured by the pet owner that they were both male but she got a very quick lesson in ‘buyer beware’ and we were delighted to end up with a dozen little pink mouslings each.
I obviously got over my affection for mice (as did my mother, who - right up until I was in my 20s - insisted that our cat Fluffy had, somehow, unlatched both mouse tanks without eating any of our little babies and they had all escaped into the back paddock – perhaps to join the Rats of NIMH).
But when the mice were gone I remember trapping a huge huntsman – a regular visitor in our rainforest home – and insisting that he was a ‘Tarantula’ and keeping him in the mouse tank.
This is what happens when you encourage your children to watch National Geographic specials instead of Saturday morning cartoons.
Apparently Fluffy set my ‘Tarantula’ free as well…she must have been a wily old Puss, that’s all I have to say.
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