Bugs have been a constant discussion in our home during the last week. My son’s fourth grade class is writing their first major report on — you guessed it — bugs.
And it’s really starting to “bug” me!
They are collecting bugs for their classroom “bug-a-torium,” which I’m imagining as something along the lines of Carnegie Hall for insects.
No problem, I think. We’ve got a big back yard… Here’s a jar, go at it!
It was a very happy kid that came running back to me ten minutes later. He proudly held out the jar which now contained one of the biggest, ugliest spiders I have ever laid my eyes on. And the jar lid was closed–sort of. I could see that it was screwed on crooked. So I really WANTED to take the jar and fix the lid. But I really DIDN’T want to take the jar, either, if you know what I mean. I guess that comes with the job title of “Mom.” So I fixed the lid and my son proudly showed his new pet to his dad.
“Isn’t that a Hobo?” my husband asked.
“What??? No…it couldn’t be,” I said while re-checking the jar lid.
My hubbie pulls out a spider trap he bought at a first aid class last year. We peer at the pictures of the ugly spiders on the front and then look back at the now very angry arachnid.
“It must just look sorta like a hobo,” I say. I’m the former park ranger of the family, after all. I should know, right? “Let me get on-line and do some research.”
After learning way more than I ever wanted to know about spiders, I decided that my husband was right. It was a poisonous Hobo spider. Also known as the “aggressive house spider.”
Lovely. Wonderful. Fantastic.
Now what?
Take him to school? Hmmm. I don’t think the other parents would approve, somehow. Release him (actually “her” we learned) back into the yard? No way. Open the lid and drop in a brick? Tempting…
I carefully wrapped about three layers of postal tape around the lid. This spider was in lock-down until we made a decision. It was quite a quandary: can’t keep it, can’t let it go.
It had to die. There was no other option. My son looked up at me with big eyes. “But Mom, you just CAN’T kill her. It’s not her fault that I dug her out of her web! She hasn’t done anything wrong. She didn’t even bite me!”
It was heartbreaking.
It was a SPIDER!
I can’t believe that all this anguish was over a spider. It wasn’t even an “insect” by definition.
Thankfully, God intervened and did the job for us. The spider died in her little jar after two days of deliberations. My son did a wonderful job of interceding for her, but her time just ran out, I suppose.
Once again, I was reminded of the Easter story.Whoa, big jump… Stay with me! Just like that ugly spider, I was condemned for my sin. I deserved to die. Who would go to all that trouble to save a lowly person like me?
But I had an intercessor, too.
God intervened. My ransom was paid. I am free.
My story has a happier ending than the Hobo’s. But I have faith that God cares for all of his creatures. Even spiders. Will spiders be in heaven? I have faith that they will.
Of course, I hope they will be a little less creepy by then!
What a beautiful story picture. I don’t mind if there are spiders in heaven, but there better not be any snakes there!
My little daughter will be quite disappointed if there are no snakes in heaven. She thinks they are “cute!” Her words, not mine. Of course, she’s only six. That may wear off. I’m actually okay with snakes… but spiders? Yikes.