Beavers don’t have a lot of holidays, so sometimes, we share in the celebrations of others. Halloween is one of my American favorites, lacking the split pants of Thanksgiving and the high anxiety of Christmas. Of course, it’s changed a bit over the years. Costumes have sprung from the stages of morality plays to the streets, where mortals once dared not walk for fear of the souls that had been loosed from Purgatory and the demons sent to reclaim them! Today’s purveyors of candy no longer ask trick-or-treaters to pray for the souls of lost loved ones, and I can bet a solid Snickers that Queen Elizabeth I would never have banned Halloween for being too Catholic if she had seen the West Hollywood Halloween Carnaval [sic]!
Nowadays, Halloween is a night devoted not only to revelry, but also to creativity! Every year, I am mightily impressed by the skill and hard work that goes into costume design and house decoration for Halloween. It gives me the shivers! For this reason, I’m seeking out a little local Halloween creativity among some ancient, scary, and super creative creatures: spiders!
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Every autumn brings an end to the butterflies at the LA County Museum of Natural History’s Butterfly Pavilion. Either they die naturally, or they get eaten by the new arrivals, several hundred spiders from around the world! These spiders are predominantly orb weavers, which means they spin webs shaped like a Ziljian cymbal, then sit around and wait for supper to come to them. You might think this would be a bad approach, but the docent on duty told me they had released two hundred flies in the pavilion one day and found three flies alive on the next!
This is a really neat enclosure! The antechamber is full of spiders behind glass, partly to protect the visitors, but mostly to protect the spiders! Here were the tarantulas, the black widows, and two other members of the arachnid class: scorpions and vinegaroons, all patiently awaiting their next meal! They weren’t especially talkative, so I headed into the main enclosure, full of trees and bushes, flowers and vines, and no glass cages. It was just me and the spiders (and about fifteen other people, but that’s beside the point)!
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The main enclosure was an awesome showcase of web design! The Spider Pavilion features webs from the 10-foot tapestry of the Giant Wood Spider of Malaysia to the tiny sheets of Grass Spiders that slipped into the enclosure from Exposition Park. Here and there were the zigzag designs of the Common Garden Spider, itself uncommonly patterned in yellow and black! Then, among these wonderfully skilled decorators and costume designers was the Golden Silk Spider, whose appropriately named golden silk has been much desired for fashion, and even as guidance material for regenerating damaged nerves!
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The staff called her Nephila clavipes, but I called her Sally. I forgot to mention that the Spider Pavilion is also a ladies’ club because lady spiders are bigger and easier to see than the fellas. In any case, Sally was relaxing by the ground and engaged me in pleasant conversation, complimenting my choice of hat! In return, I marveled at the soft, spotted fur on her head and the bright, golden sheen of her abdomen. She did not like that I was staring at her opisthosoma, even though she was speaking through it! Spiders can be so particular!
Oh, that’s right, not everyone is familiar with spider anatomy. Spiders breathe through slits in their opisthosomas (abdomens)! Their mouths are just used for eating, and many spiders actually chew with their chelicerae (fangs), which are separate from their mouths! They’re basically like a venomous moustache, which gives new meaning to the phrase “second breakfast!”
That brings us to the whole point of the Spider Pavilion: with the exception of the widows, the recluses, and the hobos, most spiders in this country are harmless. Spiders like Sally just don’t like to bite and won’t unless they’re on the verge of being squished! Why? Well, it takes a lot of time and energy to replenish venom, and they need that venom to survive! That’s why orb weavers wrap their prey first, then bite carefully once it’s immobile. A spider would much rather escape to safety when attacked, so it’s best to just leave a spider alone when you find it, or put it in a cup to take outside, and you’ll be just fine!
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Thus, in the spirit of Halloween and creativity, I, William Flattail Beaver, a cute animal by human standards, befriended Sally the Orb Weaver, a “scary” animal. It’s a shame more folks can’t look past a spider’s ugly stigma and see hard work, creativity, and especially patience. Imagine waking up on November First having turned into your costume. You would be the same person, but you would scare everyone at work or school! Odds are, someone would call the police or animal control to come shoot you! Think about that the next time you meet a spider, and take it outside instead of squashing it. Then you can appreciate an all-natural Halloween decoration and a sudden shortage of flies who went trick-or-treating at the wrong residence!
Catch you later… in my web! Ah ha ha ha ha!
