Big Daddy
I have been wondering lately if there are ever any genetic mutations of, say, Daddy Long Legs. You see, before I did the research for this blog entry and said research destroyed the whole premise of this entry, I was under the mistaken belief that Daddy Long Legs were the most poisonous spider around, and that their poor little jaws were too small to issue a bite to humans, thus sparing us a slow and painful death (who would tell if he were seizing due to a Daddy Long Leg bite?), thus allowing us to pull his legs off one by one to watch them wiggle on the concrete. Wow. That sentence was Faulkner-like.
Since my 3-year old has been having screaming dreams about spiders crawling all over her, or alternately just a really big one chasing her for the bite, I had a brilliant 2 a.m. plan. Since she likes to play with dead and alive cicadas, maybe should would want to play with a Daddy Long Legs to help her get over her fear that spiders just want to bite her, even if it is true. I could teach her about which spiders are safe to scream and point at, which ones deserve an immediate squash and which could be held, petted and the legs pulled off of.
By 3 a.m., I started to worry about things like genetic mutations. What if I caught her a nice Daddy Long Logs pet, and it happened to be the 1 out of 1,000,000,000 to be born with enormous Daddy-jaws? What if said Enormous Daddy-jaws then bit her?! At three, I am sure she would not be embarrassed to admit she was bitten, but still. The most poisonous venom of the spider world? This got me thinking -- I certainly don't want to give my child a Daddy Long Legs to get her over her bad dreams if there is an off-chance that this thing is genetically abnormal. How would I be able to tell? Measure the jaw size? Creepy!
So all bets are off. There will be no Daddy pet.
Then I woke up this morning a little early to do some "research" and learned of Mythbusters, Season 1 Episode 13: Buried in the Concrete, Daddy Long Legs, Jet Taxi. Let's just say, it ain't so. All of that worthless, neurotic worrying--about the poisonous part! Still, it COULD have really big biting jaws due to genetic abnormality or mutation...right?!
Since my 3-year old has been having screaming dreams about spiders crawling all over her, or alternately just a really big one chasing her for the bite, I had a brilliant 2 a.m. plan. Since she likes to play with dead and alive cicadas, maybe should would want to play with a Daddy Long Legs to help her get over her fear that spiders just want to bite her, even if it is true. I could teach her about which spiders are safe to scream and point at, which ones deserve an immediate squash and which could be held, petted and the legs pulled off of.
By 3 a.m., I started to worry about things like genetic mutations. What if I caught her a nice Daddy Long Logs pet, and it happened to be the 1 out of 1,000,000,000 to be born with enormous Daddy-jaws? What if said Enormous Daddy-jaws then bit her?! At three, I am sure she would not be embarrassed to admit she was bitten, but still. The most poisonous venom of the spider world? This got me thinking -- I certainly don't want to give my child a Daddy Long Legs to get her over her bad dreams if there is an off-chance that this thing is genetically abnormal. How would I be able to tell? Measure the jaw size? Creepy!
So all bets are off. There will be no Daddy pet.
Then I woke up this morning a little early to do some "research" and learned of Mythbusters, Season 1 Episode 13: Buried in the Concrete, Daddy Long Legs, Jet Taxi. Let's just say, it ain't so. All of that worthless, neurotic worrying--about the poisonous part! Still, it COULD have really big biting jaws due to genetic abnormality or mutation...right?!
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