Saturday, December 10, 2016




Spiders Need Love Too!

Lost amid the howls of outrage or joy over the election was a sad little story circulated by the Associated Press: “Tarantulas Looking For Love In California.”

Seems the mating season for the poor maligned tarantulas is now in full bloom. But, as usual, the male does all the blooming and wooing. While female tarantulas typically stay inside eating bonbons and watching “The View,” lovesick male tarantulas hike up to four miles through hostile terrain in search of a willing mate. Once he locates a lady tarantula's burrow, he does a little tap dance on the web strands outside her spider condo. That's a lot easier than dragging a bottle of Pinot Griego and a box of Whitman's Samplers to her in a harness.  Besides, I bet even lady spiders appreciate a good dancer.

So there's our eight-legged Baryshnikov dancing his heart out at the entrance of her underground grotto. If she's in the mood she might emerge to see if he has game. Then again she might not. Love is a crapshoot, even for spiders.

But at least lady tarantulas don't make a meal out of their lovers and have a cigarette after sex like Black Widows do. Okay, I made up the part about the cigarette. Spiders are too sensible to smoke. Besides, girl tarantulas already live longer than boy tarantulas, just like girl humans live longer than boy humans. Yup, it's true. Female tarantulas live up to 25 years while male tarantulas tend to croak after seven or eight years – probably from frustration or getting clobbered with a shovel by someone who never read Charlotte's Web. 

Now I know there are a lot of people who wish California would take its tarantulas and snap off at the San Andreas Fault and float away on the Japanese Current. There is even an organized movement to make California's secession from America a ballot issue. A group calling itself the Yes California Independence Campaign, or CalExit for short, told the Associated Press it plans to circulate petitions to get its secession plan on the 2018 ballot.

Such thinking is downright silly. Look, even if California became an island nation it would still have the sixth largest economy in the world. California has heaps of agriculture, industry, petroleum, and an abundance of low wage labor. Just ask anyone between Oregon and the Mexican border who eats burritos, loves lettuce, drives a car, has a computer, or been awakened by a leaf blower on a Saturday morning.

The upshot is America needs California more than California needs America. What's more, an independent California could wad the panties of conservative economists by slapping yuuge tariffs on its exports, like burritos, computers, petroleum and leaf blowers.

Anyway California is waaay too fragmented by social and political diversity to be a unified force for anything. Special interest pleaders would try to split an independent California into even smaller nation states.  That way isolationist groups with names like First Amendment First! would decriminalize rioting and looting and establish Criminacalia. The sex industry would push for a Calipornia, the vintners lobby will want to Make America Grape Again starting with Napafornia, and of course People For The Ethical Treatment Of Animals would want their own empire, Calizooia, where even a heartbroken tarantula could hold public office.  

And why not? A skunk has already been elected president.

--oOo--


Send comments, compliments, critiques and hate mail to tomatomike@aol.com

The anti-California sentiment died with Emmett Watson.  [Seattle is] an all inclusive city now.  So please take us with you. If California breaks off into the ocean I hope it plans on taking Oregon and Washington state with it.  We could build a wall to keep the Trump voters out while making those who voted for Trump pay for it .

P.S. When it is my turn to be reincarnated, I am so coming back as a girl tarantula! – Tammy

The late Emmett Watson was a Seattle newspaper columnist who resented the influx of immigrants from California.  His obituary in the the Seattle Post Intelligencer stated:  "He delighted and debunked with a broad and bodacious pen, but is perhaps remembered by his creation and periodic crusades aimed at emigre Californians, New Yorkers, and the rest of us who he felt were overloading lifeboat Seattle.  His campaign motto was Keep The Bastards Out."  -- MB  

Reminds me of something I just read about killing the spider who'd thought he was your roomie, and that you're never more than 6 feet away from a spider at any moment of your life – Lynda

And it's watching you with all 12 eyes. -- MB

I waited until this morning to read your spider/California piece. I should have read it earlier.  It was great. I will reread it after my coffee, but, as far as I can tell, it'll be just as enjoyable later as it was now. – Beaty

Thank you muchly.  -- MB

I will never forget the time I caught a tarantula when I lived on the hill.  Robert Hall, class of 1959, was a great friend at the time.  He came to visit.  I had the tarantula in a jar.  HE darn near went backwards over the couch and out the window when I presented it to him.  I still laugh at the vision.  Mother was not impressed and sent my newest pal to spider heaven. – Carol


Carol was a neighbor of mine on that same hill.  Her mother didn't like me any more than she liked the doomed tarantula. -- MB

I remember that damned leaf blower.  If my head hadn't been blowing apart, I think I might have gone and wrapped it around his neck. -- Shannon

Poor Shannon. She'd moved to the allergy capital of the known universe before escaping to a less pollen and pesticide polluted area. -- MB

Thanks Mike  I always enjoy your writing and wonderful sense of humor,  My dad would have loved your latest offering too. – Peggy

Peggy's late father was a handsome man with an elegant presence who kept a sharp mental edge in his 90s. A former vaudevillian, he shared the stage with the top acts of his day, including the Marx Brothers. Unfailingly courteous, he personified the word gentleman. I was lucky to have met him. MB.

Marvelous,  as always – Julisari

Merry Christmas Mike.  – FACS

Thanks Mike! – Bob G.

I chuckled out loud at this one.  Your delivery is very funny.  I happen to like most all creatures, including most spiders, and speaking of skunks, I had a (of course descented) pet one named Sweet Pea for a while.  Excellent pet - ate cat food, used a cat box, loved riding on my shoulder and curling up in my lap, and made no noise whatsoever.  Picture that with a long-haired blonde hippie girl and you've got a conversation starter.

As for California being separate...sigh...I am not a bit surprised.  If there is a thought in the world of doing something that hasn't already been done, someone will suggest it and even push it without regard to how incredibly stupid an idea it might be.  However, I would get another chuckle at any names you picked out were it to happen.  Lots of fun could be had by locals and news people especially.Keep 'em coming, Mike.  I always enjoy what you write. -- Zoey

I briefly had a skunk for a pet myself. A baby one. It had been abandoned when I found it crying under a parked car in a hillside neighborhood. I brought it home, and in typical teenage fashion, dumped it on my parents to care for so I could go surfing.  It got sick after a few days. My mom it took it to a vet.The vet said it was too little and too weak to survive, which is probably why its mama abandoned it, and euthanized the little critter.  My mom laid into me when she got home. "Don't you ever bring home a pet we'll lose our hearts to only to have it put to sleep!"  MB