He’ll never forget Christmas 2008, the year he was 10, the year it snowed and snowed. When my youngest child is an old man, his memory will take him back to a wish fulfilled.
Yes, it snowed. And sure, he’s delighted by a vacation made longer by his school’s early closure. But when he thinks back on his fourth-grade Christmas, I hope he remembers his dear mother’s limitless love.
Seriously, I do mean limitless love. Either that, or I’m completely crazy.
It was a simple enough wish. He asked if he could take care of one of the class pets over Christmas vacation. His teacher at Everett’s Immaculate Conception/Our Lady of Perpetual Help School has quite a menagerie. There’s a gecko. She has hermit crabs, too.
Did my son want to baby-sit those? Nope, not my kid.
“Mom, my teacher says I can bring the tarantula home. Can I? Can I?”
You heard right — the tarantula.
That was the Christmas wish, breathlessly and hopefully uttered by my boy a week or so before vacation started. According to my son, one or two classmates also wanted the big spider. There was talk of a drawing for the privilege of hosting the tarantula, but something tells me my boy was always a shoo-in for the prize.
He claims he’s the only kid in class who’ll let the thing climb up his arm. And I suspect I’m the only mom in class willing to have a tarantula Christmas.
So that’s what we’re having, this arachnophobe and her family, a happy but slightly nervous Yuletide.
Even my bold boy had a scare, and has since shown a healthy respect for our furry-legged guest.
After the tarantula had been home in my son’s room, in a heated glass tank, for a day or so, my boy decided it was time to show me how it walks on him arm. Using a piece of paper as a spider carrier, he took it out of the tank and placed it on his long-sleeved forearm. I was way across the room on the bed. Suddenly, the huge spider started to get some speed.
It quickly moved up his arm, over his shoulder, and around to his back near his neck. I heard panic in his voice when he said, “Mom, get it off me!”
What? Wasn’t this the calm guy who let the tarantula climb on him all the time at school? “But my teacher gets it off for me,” he said. For a terrible few seconds, I watched the long-legged critter crawl over his back as he stood still as a stone. It was like a horror movie come to life.
For an instant, I thought of flicking it off his back with a toy or anything I could grab in his room, but I feared it would run under the bed, never to be seen again. And I’d never be able to sleep again, wondering where in the house it was hiding.
This quick thinker grabbed a little log out of the tarantula tank and let the spider crawl onto it — inches from my hand. My son managed to lower it safely back into its tank. Our relief was almost, but not quite, laughable. It makes a good story, but at the time — so scary.
Only then did my son coolly announce that he thought it best for the tarantula to spend the rest of vacation in its tank, where we can see it but not touch it. Good deal.
I know nothing about tarantulas but what I’ve learned this week. The one at my house eats live crickets. It can bite, but apparently can’t kill us. It has orange feet, and my son thinks it’s beautiful. I can hardly look at the thing.
“Not everyone is a cat person, and not everyone is a tarantula person. To each his own,” said Marcella Nichols, the reptile manager at Jones &Co. Pets in Marysville. The store is one source for live crickets.
I’m not sure what type of tarantula our guest is. Nichols thinks it may be a rose hair. “They don’t tend to be aggressive,” she said. “They’re pretty cute, and probably the most docile. Rose hairs are least likely to bite,” Nichols said. “They don’t necessarily have a venom, it’s like a bee sting.”
Other types, including ornamental baboons, starburst baboons, and pink toe tarantulas are feistier and faster than rose hairs, she said.
Nichols said the spider can live a few days without eating, but I’ll be making a cricket run in the next couple days.
Here’s a creepy thought: Crickets come in a 24-pack — who knew? — but Nichols warned against dumping them all into the tank. “Crickets are omnivores,” she said. “They will eat the tarantula, they will attack and eat the eyes out.”
Wow, way too much information, huh?
My wry 21-year-old son said, “Think of it, Mom. You have a giant bug in there eating other bugs.” Nice.
Amazingly, Nichols sells several tarantulas each month.
“I just had a mother buying a tarantula for her daughter for Christmas. She came in and bought one of my rose hairs,” Nichols said. “Her daughter is 6, and wanted a tarantula.”
Wait a minute, I thought I was the one-in-a-million mom. I’m not that nice. The tarantula goes back, the minute school opens.
Columnist Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460 or muhlstein@heraldnet.com.
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