Predators I Have Known - Alan Dean Foster [54]
“How about ‘dead tarantula in the kitchen’?” JoAnn glared at me. “It’s your friend. You get it out. Or I’m getting a shoe.” Her nervous gaze returned to the spider, which was attempting to find a way into the space beneath the sink. “Make that a boot. A big boot.”
“Calm down. I’ll get it out.”
All it took was a large jar and a piece of cardboard. Eye to eyes, I studied the tarantula up close as its front legs pawed at the inside of the glass.
“Naughty, naughty,” I told it. “You need to learn to knock.” I looked over at JoAnn. “Look at it this way: You didn’t find the tarantula in bed.”
My wife stared back at me. “If I ever find that thing in bed with me, there are gonna be two dead bodies to throw out.”
I placed our intruder in the car and took it far, far away. To the shore of Willow Lake, where I released it into a field of dense grass doubtless gravid with grasshoppers and other suitable chitonous prey. I watched until the tarantula had disappeared from view and hoped it would find an accommodating abandoned burrow in which to spend the night. In the course of our brief encounters, it had neither nipped me nor flung a defensive cloudlet of its kind’s urticating hairs. I still thought it was beautiful. My wife thought it was the stuff of nightmares.
Occasionally, in season (yes, there is a tarantula season), I see others of its species crossing the dirt road that leads to our property, and I wonder if my tarantula has returned. Do spiders have homing instincts? What was it looking for that drove it to somehow make its way into our house? If I looked hard enough at the right time of year, would I find waiting for me at the door leading to my study a little black-and-red valentine spun out of silk and the husks of dead insects?
When my wife tells friends that I’m a little strange, there are times when even I am compelled to concede the point.
* * *
Of all the carnivores that inhabit our fertile world perhaps none elicits such universal admiration as the bird of prey. Its actions are graceful, its profile noble, its devotion to mate and family admirable. So appealing are these birds in appearance and action that we often tend to forget that they are killers as ruthless and determined as any laughing hyena or spitting cobra. Perhaps part of this willful emotional disconnect is that they kill silently. A kestrel standing atop a dead vole with its talons embedded deep in the dead rodent’s body may emit a high-pitched squeal or two, but its terse declamation of triumph is a long way from the lion’s repetitive roars or the grizzly’s incessant snarl.
Of course, snakes also kill in silence, but like the spider and the army ant, they lack the innate visual appeal of their lethal feathered counterparts. Birds of prey make frequent appearances on the currency, heraldic shields, and national symbology of numerous nations. They are the supermodels of the predator world. How often do you see a snake heroically portrayed thus, let alone a spider or carnivorous beetle? A snake does make an appearance on the flag of Mexico—as it is being snatched up by an eagle.
We cannot help ourselves, I suppose. What appears strikingly attractive to the human eye might look otherwise to an alien, who would perhaps favor the silhouette of the lamprey to that of the falcon. Beauty is in the eye of the beholding species. I sometimes wonder what the birds of prey think of our appearance.
I’ve always dreamed of seeing a harpy eagle. Discounting vultures such as the condor, the harpy and the Philippine eagle are the world’s two largest birds of prey. Much larger, though, was the Harpagornis moorei, or Haast’s eagle. Living in New Zealand and preying on the large flightless moas, it is estimated the last Harpagornis died out as recently as A.D. 1400. With a body weight of roughly thirty pounds and a ten-foot wingspan, it was big enough to bring down and prey on young humans. By way of comparison, a full-grown female bald eagle’s weight maxes