Chris’ family moved to another house. It was still close to his grandparents. This house had good areas for exploration. The front of the house faced the street. There was a backyard and beyond that, a long dirt mound separated the yard from an alleyway.
In this neighborhood, there were narrow alleys behind every house. Garage entrances opened to the alleys. Garbage was picked up from the alley, not the front street.
A beautiful, large eucalyptus tree grew right in the middle of the alley behind Chris’ new house. Cars and garbage trucks and bicycles had to go around the tree to continue down the alley.
Chris liked playing at the eucalyptus tree. He loved exploring along the dirt mound. Though the dirt was dusty dry, the mound was alive with insects and other small creatures going about their business. Chris was interested in that business.
A hole in the dirt mound excited his curiosity. He got a stick. He poked. He wondered how deep it was and pushed the stick in, to measure.
Suddenly a huge spider rushed to the entrance of the hole. She was enormous, much bigger than his hand, much bigger than reasonable. She waved her many hairy limbs, in a largely successful ploy to look terrifying.
Young Chris was startled but fascinated. He realized he’d inadvertently threatened the spider in her nest. Chris pulled back his stick and watched the spider quietly. Finally, she calmed down. Eventually she backed into her hole.
A connection was made. Chris was just a little kid, but he wanted to know a lot more about the tarantula he’d disturbed. He came back to the hole again and again on his backyard adventures. Tarantulas are nocturnal hunters, so she came out only occasionally. Chris observed her.
One time a smaller spider came out into the daylight. A male. Young Chris already knew that the male tarantula was a smaller, more neutrally colored spider. He might have already known that the male took almost a decade to mature to reproductive significance, and that he didn’t come out of his burrow until then.
It was the huge, colorful and fierce female that made the lasting impression.
Seven or eight years later Chris was twelve years old. He lived in Chicago. His school teacher gave the students an assignment to write about something from their own lives. His mother read the first draft.
“You need a dramatic beginning to get the reader hooked, Chris. Remember that time, when you were little in California, and the tarantula sprang out of the ground at you? Why don’t you start by describing that?”
Chris did remember. He rewrote the assignment, opening with that female spider from his distant past. The heroine was likely still alive, even after so many years. She was probably still living in the dusty mound, hunting at night and emerging occasionally in the day to defend her nest. Lady tarantulas are known to live for about 25 years. Chris’ Tarantula would have lived through the rest of his childhood. That memory of their interesting encounter and continued relationship has lived considerably longer.
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