As has happened before, I've asked Ken Anderson, the editor of Magic City News if I could use in "Down the Road a Piece" a really interesting piece he e-mailed me. He has agreed for me to share with you this buggy tale of a mother and her many, many -- even more than that -- kiddos...a tale which makes me wonder when being kind is being too kind, or unkind to we who are being kind. But give Ken credit for trying to be kind to his tenants, who failed to reciprocate... not because they were being mean, but just doing what came naturally.
So, read on and then check your cabinets.
"Years ago, when I was renting an apartment with a friend of mine in Cypress, California, we found a black widow spider in the cabinet under our sink. Rather than killing her, we made sure that we knew where she was before we sat down anywhere or reached for something under the sink.
"That went on for several months. Our spider never seemed to leave her place under the sink, at least not while we were up and around, and we let her be. In fact, it was a nice conversation starter, when we would warn guests not to reach into the cabinet under the sink.
"Our arrangement came to an end when I looked into the cabinet one day to find that our tenant was a mother.
"With thousands of baby back widow spiders crawling around, we could foresee some problems with our arrangement in the not-too-distant future.
"We encouraged the new mother to crawl onto a newspaper and transferred her to a bush outside the apartment; actually, nearer to someone else's apartment, then we brought out as many of the babies as we could get to crawl onto our newspaper.
"As there were still at least a couple of dozen of the critters crawling around inside the cabinet and a few outside the cabinet, it seemed that there might be a problem safely evicting all of them, so we set a bug bomb off in the bathroom and went out to lunch."
I know, Ken, you don't like to kill anything living, as Dolores and I don't. It makes you feel bad when you have to, even it's a black widow or a lot of them.
Just the other day on my Island Explorer bus I slowed and missed two yearling deer standing on the road, a mid-size snapper turtle trying to decide how many months it would take to finish crossing the pavement, and a snowshoe rabbit who dashed across the road in front of the bus. I also swerved and missed on two separate occasions, two mice trotting across the road -- their backs arched for speed and their tiny legs a blur.
Oops, wait a second. There, sorry about that delay in sending this be-kind-to-critters tale, but I just got that darned mosquito that must have snuck in when I let Big Guy out the back door.
Now I can hit "send."
Milt Gross can be reached for corrections, harassment, or other purposes at lesstraveledway@midmaine.com.
Milton M. Gross Copyright 2009
