I walked into the kitchen a moment ago and saw a small spider hovering a few inches above the counter top. For those of you not familiar with my kitchen, it has high vaulted ceilings. This means that for a spider to hover in said position, it was hanging from a very long strand of web.
I watched it for a moment. (It was a very small spider. I was not scared.) It dropped another inch lower, so I commented on what I was seeing. AJ ran over to look.
Just as he arrived, the spider dropped the final distance and landed on the counter. Armed with a slipper, I was ready for it.
Whack!
"Is it dead?" AJ asked.
"I think so," I peered at the now even smaller spider. Its legs had curled to its body on impact. I scooped it up with a piece of scratch paper and dumped it into the garbage.
"That's the kind of spider that carries its babies on its back," AJ informed me. He wrote a nine-sentence report on spiders for school last month, which apparently qualifies him as an expert.
"So you're saying I'm a baby spider murderer?" I asked.
"I read a book about it and it said that if it looks like a pine cone on its back, then it carries its babies there," he responded.
I wanted to know how he possibly could have seen any details on the spider's back, or even how he could tell if it was the spider's back he was seeing. But instead I asked, "So you're saying I shouldn't have killed it?"
"No. Because you don't want them mad at you."
"They're dead. It doesn't matter if they're mad at me."
AJ had no response. He walked back into the living room and resumed his play-by-play re-creation of a Wild game using his mini stick and mini goal. "Parise scores!"
But apparently no score for mom. Though I like to think it's Mom: 1, Spiders: 0.
Safe to assume I shouldn't count on my son to kill any big spiders for me. He'll be too busy assessing the critter and trying to figure out the effect its death would have on the surrounding ecosystem.
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