Daily News-Record, January 3, 2023
About 20 years ago, Peggy Monks of Charlottesville, Virginia, shared an adorable “family tale” with me. She had enjoyed an article on daddy longlegs that I’d written, and she wanted to share the following story that she thought would interest me. (It did!)
Peggy wrote that “many years ago, my eight-year-old cousin, Charles, always experimenting, read somewhere that the daddy longlegs was so small-bodied because, not weaving a web—or at least not a very efficient one—he could never get enough to eat.” (I love this explanation.)
Peggy continued that “this was enough to get Charles going. He captured a daddy longlegs and placed it under a pint glass and fed it every day. Flies, ants, anything he could forage. Now comes the unbelievable part! My aunt, one day fighting to clear some of Charles’ experiments in his cluttered room, was horrified to find this enormous spider tightly wedged in the glass with three children’s encyclopedias on top to hold it down! The story goes that my aunt had to call in a veterinarian who had to administer chloroform [to render the spider unconscious] so that he could remove the spider before killing it.”
I would hope that nowadays a veterinarian wouldn’t kill the spider, but would instead simply return it to the outdoors. Of course, the daddy longlegs could not really have turned into a huge spider, but I hope that this little family story brought a smile to your face just as it did to mine.
Peggy sent me another story about Charles, this one also a true story that is rather cute. She explained she was an English/American citizen, and the following narrative took place in London.
She wrote that “Charles never lost his interest in anything that moved! He traveled the world and brought back everything from goldfish to crocodiles. Just before World War II, he opened an aquarium on the roof of Selfridges, a large store in Oxford Street. He contracted to service the many fish tanks in Buckingham Palace.”
Peggy went on to say that Charles very nearly lost this contract when a daily paper published a picture of him entering the palace with a large suitcase and the caption, “The only man in London who can take fleas into Buckingham Palace.”
She explained that “What they meant, of course, was Daphnia”, small aquatic crustaceans (a grouping of animals that have a shell or “crust” and live in water) that are also known as “water fleas”. These animals are not insects like dog/cat fleas; Daphnia are instead part of a large class of animals that includes barnacles, crabs, lobsters, and shrimps. Charles was bringing the dead “fleas” to the palace to feed to the royal fish!
I love hearing nature anecdotes as they can be informative as well as funny. I hope you will experience an interesting wildlife encounter this new year, and if you’d like to share it publicly, please e-mail me at marlenecondon@aol.com I may use it in a future column.
Marlene A. Condon is the author/photographer of The Nature-friendly Garden: Creating a Backyard Haven for Plants, Wildlife, and People (Stackpole Books; information at www.marlenecondon.com). You can read her blog at https://InDefenseofNature.blogspot.com