The Spider

The family moved to a small town about an hour south of the big city. We were in a small valley pegged between two very large mountain ranges. We had a local community college that almost doubled the population when it was in session. My parents bought a small house that was built by the community college as part of their construction program when we moved into the house it was new but had been vacant for about 6 months. The yard was just weeds. Tumbleweeds can grow to amazing heights and our yard won the prize for tallest weeds for miles around. Tumbleweeds are odd plants because it seemed to me that they grew dry and brown. I am sure there was some green on them somewhere but all I ever saw was brown. My older sister, younger brother, younger younger brother, and a new younger sister were told to go play outside while Mom organized the kitchen and put away boxes of sundry items. We made trails through the tumbleweeds and could hide quite easily among them. Tumbleweeds must have minds of their own because whenever we went running through them the tumbleweeds would reach out and grab at the sleeves of our shirts and gave us many small scratches on our arms and cheeks. I think the tumbleweeds secretly knew that they were going to be plucked out of the ground soon and wanted to draw first blood. Shortly after arriving in this small town, while playing in the tumbleweeds, I saw something amazing. A spider. Now this was no ordinary spider, this was a cat face spider. Now if you look up cat face spider you will see how cool they are. They make very intricate webs and then sit in wait for their prey. I was obviously too big to be its prey. The spider was big enough that it could catch small grasshoppers in the web it had created. So I went hunting for food for this spider. I caught a few grasshoppers and threw them into the web and then watched as the spider did what all spiders do...ate lunch. What delight to feed a spider. My older sister, younger brother, younger younger brother and new younger sister all got a kick out of catching grasshoppers to feed to our new friend. Well I thought we could do one better. I went inside and asked Mom for a mason jar. She asked what for, so I told her and she helped me put a few holes in the top of a lid so that it could breath. I went outside with my mason jar and broke off a few branches of the tumbleweed closest to me. Then I lured the spider onto another stick I had and put the cat face spider and the stick into the jar. My older sister, younger brother, younger younger brother and new sister caught a few more grasshoppers for the spider and put them in the jar. Our spider was so much fun to watch. I think it slept some, ate a lot of grasshoppers, and probably couldn't possibly understand the hospitality we were showing it. The curve of the jar must have made our faces look very funny as we stared at the cat face spider. Mom told me that I could not under any circumstance put the spider in my room for the night. Mom didn't want it in the house at all but I thought it cruel to put the jar outside with the spider in it because maybe the other cat face spiders would laugh or tease our spider. We compromised and put it in the garage. The next morning we promptly forgot about our friend the cat face spider sitting in the garage in a mason jar full of grasshoppers to eat. A week went by and we still did not remember the cat face spider. Now dad was working so he did not know anything about the cat face spider we had put in the garage. One morning as he was getting in his car in the garage he noticed something move in the corner. He went to investigate and found a broken mason jar swallowed up by a spider web. Now as I mentioned before we had fed our cat face spider very well and it had almost doubled in size from when we had caught it. Dad does not like spiders. Dad especially doesn't like giant cat face spiders. He yelled for Mom to come and see the spider. Of course we all came running too. Mom told the story of the spider to Dad. I wanted to recapture it but Dad grabbed a broom and swept it out the garage door to freedom. I saw many cat face spiders since then but never one so big as the giant cat face spider that scared Dad that day.