Kind of.
I mean, to say that I fell in "love" with a spider just makes me sound like a loon or a character in a Stephenie Meyer novel.
But let me just tell you about this bamf tarantula.
This tarantula.
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| And yeah, you better believe I Instagrammed the shiz out of this bad boy |
I ailed of the streptococcal infection of the pharynx this week and thus missed my zoology lab. Today after class I was given a whirlwind tour of all the arthropod action I missed in lab, and as Professor Martin was talking me through the arachnids, I saw this little guy out of the corner of my eye.
My first instinct was to to seize with horror as I immediately recalled the creepy-ass scene from Chamber of Secrets where Aragog sics his bloodthirsty giant spider-babies on Harry and Ron and there are like hairy legs and web junk flying everywhere and they're making those bloodthirsty giant spider-baby squeaks (which, for the record, real tarantulas do not make. They just put em in the movie for effect. And it worked).
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| And y'all know at that point you were like "I AM FRIENDS OF HAGRID TOO I SWEAR" |
But after I made my rounds through the crustaceans and the hexapods and such I felt weirdly compelled to go take another look at the big hairy arachnid. I sat down in front of his cage and just looked at him. He just chilled there. I looked. He chilled. I looked. He twitched a little bit and resumed chilling.
The squirminess vanished and gave way to puzzlement. You have 8 legs. You are hairy. You crawl. You make webs that catch flies and suck out their guts. Big deal. Why are people so scared of you? Why do people hate you so much? We have a common enemy (flies)! Shouldn't that make us allies?
It's so easy to love things that are beautiful. Too easy. At some point we completely cave to the love of beauty of the thing and forget about the thing itself. How do you know you love the thing and not just the pleasant qualia it evokes? At what point can you see past that? Can you ever?
It's kind of like when you see a couple, and one of them is beautiful and the other one is kind of unfortunate-looking, and you are amazed and are thinking in the direction of the unfortunate-looking one, "wow, he/she must love you. Like really LOVE you to be able to look at you."
I mean, that never happens to me because I'm not a shallow jerk. I'm talking about YOU. Of course.
The point is, I am as capable of loving an ugly horrifying spider as I am a beautiful blue butterfly or a lovely spring morning or a Monet painting or Ryan Gosling. Beauty is such a mirage, and honestly, I'm sick of it. It lies. It teases you. It is unattainable.
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| F&%K OFF RYAN GOSLING |
"Does this handsome young arachnid have a name?" I ask Professor Martin.
"Not that I know of. We raffle them off at the end of the semester though." He says.
"...."
"You can play with him if you want."
I did not play with Malvolio, although I did name him Malvolio. I have been trying ever since to imagine a scenario in which my roommates would not have horrifyingly massive cows if I brought home a tarantula, and I'm coming up with nothing. It wouldn't be like second grade, when Andra let me and my brothers keep this big-ass orange cat spider named George in the house in a jar for four days until he died from the stress of being exposed at one too many elementary school show-and-tells. My roommates would soil their pantaloons and violently fire extinguisher blast Malvolio in like four seconds.
The thing is, there is no math known to mankind that can calculate how few shits Malvolio gives about being taken to a home where he is loved and played with and given plentiful fly guts to nom on. He's a scrappy little mofo. He has been bred to be abhorred. He thrives on it. He's probably still chillin in his cage in that rancid lonely corner of the bioscience building going,
"You can love me."
"You can loathe me."
"You can fear me."
"But you WILL respect me."
And for that kind of badassery, I want to fist-bump each of his hairy little legs.
