How to Be a Good Creature Read online

  People aren’t born with a fear of spiders—all sorts of psychological tests have proven that—but arachnophobia is an exceptionally easy fear to invoke. You can quickly teach a young person or animal to fear anything, including a harmless flower. But in experiments, people (and monkeys) will learn to fear a spider or snake much faster than they will learn to fear a plant. And like most Americans, I’d grown up hearing lots of bad spider PR. Several times in my youth and adulthood, when I’d woken up in the morning with a hot red bump somewhere, doctors had diagnosed the problem (usually incorrectly, insisted Sam) as a spider bite—giving the false impression that spiders bite senselessly, without provocation, and, worse, that they’re lurking everywhere, even in your bed. When I was growing up, my mother had warned me about black widow spiders, whose venom is reportedly fifteen times as toxic as a rattlesnake’s. In Australia, I’d learned to be careful of the redback spider, a species closely related to black widows, which bites people far more often, as they particularly like dark places such as latrines, where they are sat upon. All of this was stored in my brain somewhere as Sam was offering to put a live wild tarantula into my hand.

  I looked down to see that before I even answered, I had already stretched out my palm.

  Sam nudged the back of her abdomen with my pen and she extended first one black hairy leg, then another, and another after another, until she was standing on my hand. The hooked tarsi at the tips of her feet felt vaguely prickly on my skin, like those of the Japanese beetles I have enjoyed holding since I was little. She stood for a moment while I admired her. She was a jet-haired beauty who looked like she had just had a fancy pedicure, the ends of her feet tipped in a bright, girly pink. For this reason, her species is known as the pinktoe tarantula. They’re exceptionally docile and seldom bite. Even their hairs are not usually irritating.

  She began to walk. Slowly at first, stepping forward with her front legs, she crossed my right palm into my waiting left, just as my first dime-store turtle, Ms. Yellow Eyes, would do when I was a child. The tarantula probably weighed about as much as my turtle had.

  And then something magical happened. Holding her in my hand, I could literally feel a connection with this creature. No longer did I see her as a really big spider; now I saw her as a small animal. Of course she was both. “Animals” include not only mammals but also birds and reptiles, amphibians and insects, fish and spiders, and many more. But perhaps because the tarantula was furry, like a chipmunk, and big enough to handle, now I saw her and her spider kin in a new light. She was a unique individual, and in my hand, she was in my care. A wave of tenderness swept over me as I watched her walk, softly, slowly, and deliberately, across my skin.

  Until, that is, she started to speed up. What was she doing?

  “They do speed up, and sometimes they bunch up and launch,” said Sam. When this happens in his lab, he advises students to step away, unless they want a flying tarantula landing on them. Though pinktoes build their silky retreats in the eaves of buildings, in shrubs, and in the curves of leaves on pineapple plantations, they know they belong in trees, and if they feel threatened, they usually head upward.

  Now I was nervous—so nervous, in fact, that I began to shake. But my concern was not that a tarantula might run up my face. I felt faint with fear that if she launched, this beautiful, gentle animal might land on the tiled veranda and hurt herself. Since like all spiders she wore her skeleton on the outside, it was possible that a fall could break her exoskeleton. A beautiful wild creature might lose her life. And it would be my fault.

  “I think I’d better put her back,” I told Sam. I returned her to his hand and he replaced her on the bromeliad, where she retreated to her silken home.

  ✧

  That evening when we returned from the day’s den census, she was still there. “I think we have a pet tarantula,” Sam announced. He named her Clarabelle.

  It was a fitting name for a pretty and elegant lady—which Clarabelle was. Tarantulas, Sam explained to us, are “tidy little homemakers,” lining their hideaways, whether in trees or in the ground, with fresh, dry silk. “They’re like regular Martha Stewarts!” Sam told us. Despite spiders’ reputations as dirty, nasty “bugs,” tarantulas are as immaculate as cats, carefully cleaning any dirt that falls on their bodies by meticulously drawing the hairs on their legs through the mouth, using their fangs like the teeth of a comb.

  We grew increasingly fond of Clarabelle. Mornings and evenings, we’d check on her to make sure she was okay. Tarantulas are well armed against their enemies, but some do succumb. Occasionally, an agile-fingered mammal—a particularly stoic monkey or an exceptionally tough coatimundi—will withstand the shower of irritating hairs to fish a tarantula from her hole and eat her. So will certain birds. Female pepsis wasps, hummingbird-size flying insects, sting tarantulas into paralysis; then they lay eggs in their flesh so that when they hatch, the larvae can feast on the living spider. I sometimes worried about Clarabelle during the day, and was always relieved when we’d return to find her safe in her bromeliad.

  I wondered: Did Clarabelle know us? “Spiders are individuals like everyone else,” Sam assured us. He’s had pet tarantulas since he was thirteen, and in his lab in Ohio, he had about five hundred of them. Through the years of interacting with them, Sam learned that within the same species, some individuals seemed calm and others nervous. Some changed their behavior over time and appeared to grow calmer in his presence. Later, with Nic, I’d visit his tarantula lab. One of his students noted that something unusual happened when Sam walked in. Even though many of his tarantulas were naturally blind, when Sam—and only Sam—entered the room, five hundred tarantulas invariably turned in their terrariums and oriented toward him.

  ✧

  As the days passed, it seemed that Clarabelle was growing calmer as we handled her. This could have been, of course, that we were growing more used to her. Perhaps she was inadvertently teaching us to be calm and responding to our increasing ease in holding a spider. All three of us enjoyed interacting so intimately with this small wild animal. She made us feel even more at home at Emerald Jungle Village.

  One day Nic tossed her a katydid and took her portrait as she was eating it. Most spiders, after injecting prey with paralyzing venom, pump fluid from their stomach into the victim to liquefy the meal, then suck it dry and toss the skin away. Tarantulas do it differently. Clarabelle ground up her food with teeth behind her fangs. Though I felt bad for the katydid—a relative of the friendly, familiar cricket—I loved that we could give something to Clarabelle. For she herself had much to give, and was about to become a spider ambassador.

  ✧

  The morning of our last full day in French Guiana, Sam urged Clarabelle into a plastic deli carton. We were taking her with us on our last trip to Trésor Réserve, after which she would be released back at the potted plant where she was found. But first Sam had organized a meeting for her with some people who, like her, were small but important.

  By the head of the trail leading into the jungle, they were waiting: nine children from the local school, ages six through ten, had come from the nearby village of Roura. Joep introduced them to Sam in French. “On voit aujourd’hui Dr. Marshall . . .” But Sam was eager to introduce the real guest of honor. Removing the deli carton from his backpack, he carefully peeled off the lid. One hairy leg arched over the lip of the container, and then another and another, until Clarabelle stepped calmly onto Sam’s palm.

  “Qui veux la toucher?” he asked the children.

  Who wants to touch her?

  For a moment, nobody spoke. One little girl had earlier confessed she was afraid of spiders. But then a ten-year-old boy in a baseball cap raised his hand. Sam showed him how to extend his palm to let Clarabelle step aboard. She moved so delicately and deliberately that soon nine little palms stretched out to hold her—even the little girl who said she was afraid.

  Nic took many photos for our book that day. I still love to look at the hands of thos
e kids: brown hands, pink hands, gently cupped to welcome the footfall of a creature that some of them had only moments earlier viscerally feared. In one photo, three girls huddle together to let Clarabelle stroll across their skin. Their eyes look down on the spider with concentration and reverence; their faces are relaxed with the sense of peace and wholeness that only holding a small, charming animal can bring. Now they saw a wild creature in their native forests in an entirely new way. That day, I heard a little girl in neat pigtails murmur, almost under her breath, “Elle est belle, le monstre.” She is beautiful, the monster.

  ✧

  By allowing me to handle her, Clarabelle had opened to me a spidery world I’d previously never appreciated. Her great size was only the most obvious aspect of her magnificence. Like all spiders, she possessed astonishing superpowers. Since she wore her skeleton on the outside, she could shed her outer covering—and even the lining of her mouth, stomach, and lungs—when she needed to grow. If a leg was injured, she could pull it off, eat it, and grow a new one. From her own body she could pull silk, and by this action transform what began as a liquid to a solid softer than cotton but stronger than steel.

  Creatures with these same gifts were so common at home that I had passed them without notice. In our basement in Hancock, we had cellar spiders with elongated bodies and elegant legs, who hung upside down and vibrated their webs disconcertingly if you touched them. In the woodpile, we often found jumping spiders, who had excellent vision and seemed to notice us and leap aside. We had many spiders living in the barn, and when one would inevitably weave a web by Christopher’s pen, naturally it reminded me of a scene from Charlotte’s Web. Of course, I would never have hurt a spider. In our farmhouse, I didn’t vacuum enough to endanger their webs. If a spider appeared in a bothersome spot—in the tub, or on my pillow, for instance—Howard or I would carefully capture the creature in a yogurt cup and transport it outside.

  But perhaps because they were so small, perhaps because they were so common, or perhaps because they were invertebrates, with lives so unlike the birds, mammals, and reptiles I knew so much better, I’d never before given spiders much thought.

  Now, thanks to Clarabelle, even the most ordinary corners of our home were freshly enchanted. The world, I realized, brimmed even fuller with life than I had suspected, rich with the souls of tiny creatures who may love their lives as much as we love ours.

  It was Christmas morning, and time for the traditional feast for our flock of hens. As Tess chewed her celebratory rawhide in the house and Christopher slurped his hot mash in his pen, I brought the Ladies a big bowl of hot, fresh popcorn to start the holiday, as I always did. But on this morning, I was greeted with a sad surprise. One of my Ladies, a beloved older black-and-white hen of the heritage Dominique breed, was dead on the floor, her head wedged into a hole in the corner of the coop.

  I stooped to lift the fallen chicken up by her scaly yellow legs. But I couldn’t. Something—or someone—had ahold of her head and wouldn’t let go. I pulled and pulled. Finally, her body came free. An instant later, out from the hole popped a white head smaller than a walnut, with coal-black eyes, a pink nose . . . and flecks of crimson blood on the white fur around its mouth. It was an ermine, a tiny weasel in its winter-white color phase. It stared directly into my eyes.

  I had never seen one before. It was gorgeous. The ermine’s fur was the purest white I had ever seen, whiter than snow or cloud or sea foam—so white it seemed to glow, like the garment of an angel. No wonder kings trimmed their robes in ermine fur. But even more impressive was its gaze—a look so bold and fearless that it knocked the breath from my lungs. Here was a creature the length of my hand, who weighed little more than a handful of change, but who had come out of its hole expressly to challenge me even as I towered menacingly above. What are you doing with my chicken? those coal eyes said to me. Give it back!

  Of course, I had been thinking it was my chicken. Like my friend had done with the first flock of hens she gave me, I had hand-raised this hen, as I had all of her sisters, from a fluffy chick still egg-shaped two days after hatching. Our chicks grow up in my home office, cheerfully perching on my lap and shoulders as I write, or racing around the floor after one another, spreading wood shavings and feather dust. They occasionally add to my prose by walking across my computer keyboard.

  As a result of their upbringing, everyone in the flock was remarkably affectionate. After I had moved their headquarters from my office to their coop in the barn and they began their free-range careers in the yard, they would rush to mob Howard and me whenever we stepped outside. They made us feel like rock stars. Then they’d squat in front of us to be stroked or picked up and kissed on their combs. They’d hang out with Christopher Hogwood when he was out on his tether, sometimes stealing scraps. They were unperturbed by Tess, who was too focused on the Frisbee to chase them. They followed Howard and me as we did yard work, commenting constantly in their lilting chicken voices: Here I am. Where are you? Any worms? Oh, a bug! Over here . . . At night when I closed them into their coop, they’d fly up to their perches—each has a regular position, next to her best friends—and I’d stroke them and let their contented nighttime clucks and trills sweep over me like a lullaby.

  The dead hen was one of the Ladies who’d been with us longest. She had helped to teach the younger chicks the parameters of our joint property with Kate, Jane, and Lila, warned the babies about crossing the street, called to them when she spotted a hawk. She was one who came most eagerly to be petted and fed, and had even taken to perching on the folding chairs beside the table we set outside beneath the big silver maple, where we’d eat in summer.

  Her body was still warm as I held her in my hands. Before me was her killer. You’d think I’d have been overwhelmed with anger, out for vengeance. It had happened before. My first day of kindergarten, I saw a little boy pulling the legs off a daddy longlegs. I bit him, and to my parents’ horror, I was sent home in ignominy. In college, I’d had another incident. Furious when I’d learned that a former boyfriend’s roommate had lied about him to authorities, I set out to confront him. But I unexpectedly ran into the guy on my way up the stairs to find him. To our mutual surprise—I’m small with birdlike bones—I grabbed the man by his collar and threw him against the wall. I was shaking with rage and shocked at the strength it gave me.

  As a young adult, I feared anger, because I thought it was in my blood. Though my father was so respected that I heard a subordinate once fainted with fear before him, he was even-tempered. But my mother was capable of dizzying wrath. When I was in high school, I’d invited a boyfriend to join me at a Saturday-night Bible study a few blocks from our house. He’d told his parents to pick him up at our house afterward. My parents were out that night—and though we never went inside our house, when my parents came home first, my mother, who had been drinking, shrieked at us with rage. I had been strictly told not to let any boy in the house when my parents weren’t home. I hadn’t. Nonetheless, my mother threatened to take me to the hospital to determine whether I had lost my virginity. Somehow my father dissuaded her from this errand, but I was banned from seeing the boy, and from attending Bible study, for a long time afterward. (Many years later, I realized why my mother was so angry. With the aid of several martinis, she worried that a neighbor might have seen a boy standing outside the empty house with her daughter and concluded we were the “wrong kind” of family.)

  Anger haunted my mother as my father lay dying from cancer. One afternoon while we were on opposite sides of my father’s bed, at the mention of some ordinary financial detail, my mother clenched her slender, manicured hand into a claw and took a swipe at my face. I caught her delicate wrist in midair. She had swung at me so hard that my hand, stopping hers, left a bruise on her skin. My father made me apologize to her.

  But toward the ermine, who had killed someone I loved, I felt no anger at all.

  Here before me was one of the world’s smallest carnivores. It is as if all the feroci
ty of the world’s wild hunters—lions, tigers, wolverines—has been concentrated into a creature who weighs less than half a pound. Quick as lightning, an ermine can leap into the air to kill a bird as it takes flight, or follow a lemming down a tunnel. It can swim, climb trees, and bring down an animal many times its size with a single bite to the neck—and then drag it away. An ermine consumes five to ten meals a day. It needs to eat at least a quarter to a third of its own weight just to survive in captivity, and much more in the wild, especially during the cold winter. These little animals’ hearts beat nearly four hundred times a minute. No wonder they kill everything they can at every opportunity. They are glorious in their single-minded ferocity.

  I then understood something important about my mother. She was, in her way, as fierce as that ermine. She was the only child of a postmaster and an ice man in a tiny town in Arkansas. She grew up with three strikes against her: she was poor, she lived in a rural area, and she was a female. Yet at a time when girls were discouraged from education and adventure, she had learned to fly a plane, had gone to college, made valedictorian of her class, landed a job at the FBI, and married an army officer. She’d grown up in a house where she could see chickens scratching in the dirt beneath the floorboards of the kitchen. Sometimes she had hunted squirrels to eat; her old shotgun still rested in the corner of a bedroom closet in each house where my family had lived. But through the force of her will and her intellect, she had transformed it all: the military gave her servants to clean the house, mow the lawn; a chef cooked at her parties. Her husband had a staff car, a yacht, and a plane at his disposal. As a child, I had always looked to my father, a survivor of the Bataan Death March and a decorated war hero, as my model of courage and persistence, but my mother’s example, too, had helped me to grow up believing that if anything could be done by a human, it could be done by me. Her achievement was a feat as staggering as an ermine taking down a hen.