September 14, 2012

That wriggled and wriggled and tickled inside her

My students were in groups, working on collaborative projects, when I heard a young woman say, “Ew. A spider.”

“I’ll kill it for you,” offered the kid next to her.

“No, don’t kill it!” protested a third student. She looked up from her notebook. “Spiders are living creatures. And they’re valuable.”

This kind of debate is common in a classroom at Little Green, where some students are hunters and others are animal rights activists. Currently, all of our first year students take a biology course taught by an entomologist who finds bugs fascinationg, and that enthusiasm tends to be contagious.

I watched to see what the students would do next. I figured they’d either smash the spider or carry it outside. The young man in the tie-dyed shirt picked the little spider up by letting it crawl on his finger. He held it so we could all take a look. 

“It’s awfully small, but you see all the legs,” Dark Glasses said. They spent a couple minutes trading facts about spiders.

Then Long Braid tried to get them back on task, “Come on, we need to finish this.”

Tie-Dye Shirt shrugged, popped the spider into his mouth, and looked back down at his notebook.

Yep, that’s right. He ATE the spider. That’s an option I hadn’t even thought of.

14 comments:

o said...

:O

I..... Oh Good Lord! What did you do?! Did you say anything?!

I'M HORRIFIED!!! :)

EKSwitaj said...

I was always the third student. :-)

As for eating the spider, well, I suppose it's better than just squashing it and letting it go t waste?

Teri said...

eew eew eew eew eew eew! There's a reason you hadn't considered that solution before! (shudder)

jo(e) said...

O: I laughed and said, "Wait! Did you really just eat that spider?" And the girl next to him said, "Yep, he did." Then we went back to the stuff we were working on.

jo(e) said...

EKSwitaj: Exactly! When we talk about hunting, most students (even the animal rights activists) are okay with hunting so long as you eat or use all parts of the animal. it's trophy hunting that they all find unethical. So pretty much everyone in the room was okay with his action.

Anonymous said...

Don't they train you to eat worms and spiders and bugs in basic training? They must be edible. But still, ewwwwwww!

Mary Beth said...

In all settings in my life, I have been the designated person who carries the spider outside. But the end of that post made me LOL. You, my friend, are such a writer.

delagar said...

AARGH!

I think I would have laughed too.

But yikes.

Jennifer (ponderosa) said...

Ha!!

We let a certain number of spiders live in our house. They eat the fruit flies, which in my mind are much, much more annoying than spiders. But -- we do kill the spiders if they get above a certain size. Quarter-sized spiders are just unnerving.

Bardiac said...

Extra protein!

Val said...

A surprise ending from jo(e)! :)

Emma said...

I'm not sure how nutritious a spider would be ....

Kyla said...

I didn't see that coming! :)

Magpie said...

perfect!