"The Ballad of Face"

I have always had a very soft spot in my heart and soul for animals of every sort. That even includes reptiles, which I realize are not everyone’s favorite critters. Snakes, frogs, lizards, I love them all. I can even tolerate a few insects, although I have to admit I draw the line at a few of the native Arizona crawlies that choose to take up residence in my house. The tarantula I call Gomer that lives under my hay shed is fine, he keeps his distance and never jumps at me. He and the King Snake (Otis), who also inhabits the warm hay shed, seem to get along okay and pose no threat to my safety or sanity.

I have not always enjoyed the company of tarantulas, however. When my son, Kris, was about ten he had a pet tarantula he called Ziggy. Ziggy inhabited an aquarium in my son’s bedroom and feasted on the crickets and moths he was fed on a daily basis, which kept Kris busy for at least twenty or thirty minutes a day, all the less time for him to get into some sort of mischief.

Ziggy hated me. No, I mean he really, truly hated me. I got along just fine with Kris’s Guinea Pigs and the Ball Python named Monty. I even fared well with the mice Kris raised to feed Monty, although it only took less that three months for two mice to turn into a seething mass of about forty mice. Monty just could not eat them fast enough to keep the burgeoning population from taking over the cage so we donated quite a few to the local zoo. I wish I could have donated Ziggy!

There are people who will tell you that a tarantula doesn’t have the capacity to hate someone, but I would argue that point. I have since learned the wonders of the big, furry spiders and no longer loathe them as I did back then, but twenty-some years ago I had neither love nor affection for the monstrous Ziggy, and he knew it.

From the moment I would walk into my son’s room, (which in itself took a good deal of courage), Ziggy would begin to face off with me. He would turn directly towards me and begin to exhibit his offensive push-ups, his front legs waving in the air like two claws piercing at the weak, human form that was cowering outside his glass cage. I tried to reason with him, explaining that I was only in the room because if I didn’t clean it once in a while it would have been condemned, but Ziggy never accepted that excuse. His beady, extended eyes would drill into me like hot pokers, his tiny tarantula muscles would tense for the attack; I’m pretty sure he even hissed at me a few times and gnashed his razor sharp teeth. Well, okay - maybe the teeth-thing was in my imagination, but you get the picture.

I believe the Ziggy pot came to a boil the day I crept into my son’s room to wade through his sea of dirty clothes, food wrappers and assorted boy’s paraphernalia, and found not just Ziggy in the aquarium but also an identical twin. Two tarantulas now inhabited my world! Somehow, overnight, Ziggy had cloned a brother; just as big, just as furry, just as fierce as the original. The only difference was, while Ziggy postured himself at me, waving his claws, gnashing his teeth and hissing in defiant fury, his revolting twin just sat there, staring.
I did take notice of this phenomena but I was too appalled at finding the twin to really care. I think I started bellowing in midair as I made the leap to Kris’s bed,
“KRISTOPHER!”

“Huh?” As it turned out, Kris was in the closet fastening little plastic skulls to his shoelaces, but I could not see him for the mounds of clutter that surrounded him.

I was doing my panic-dance on his bed, sending pieces of food and dirty socks bouncing up and down with me on the mattress, “Where did you get that!?” I demanded. It was pretty amazing I could speak at all as I was seriously hyperventilating.

Kris’s blue eyes peeked out from his cave of clutter, “Get what?”

“THAT!” I screeched, pointing to the aquarium. “The other spider!”

Now my brave, foolish son crawled out of his closet and meandered over to Ziggy’s home where he grinned and reached in (arrrggh!) and picked up the Twin Tarantula by a fuzzy leg, “This?” he asked innocently, waving it in front of me like a prize.

My eyes, which happen to be the same, innocent shade of blue as my son’s, were rolling like pinwheels, “Yes! That! Who told you that you could get another…”

“Mom!” Kris interrupted me, still smirking, “Calm down! It’s just his exoskeleton.”
“His what?”

“His exoskeleton. His skin. He shedded his skin…see? It’s not a real spider…it’s Ziggy’s skin.”

It took a few moments for the words to sink in but as my heart rate went from three hundred beats a minute to two-twenty, I realized the Thing Kris was holding in front of me was, in truth, inanimate. Exoskeleton? Who had heard of such a thing? Since when do spiders shed whole copies of themselves? And why did my ten-year-old son know this when I did not? Well, that part was unimportant, “Okay, okay…exoskeleton…but that’s it for Ziggy! My heart can’t take this anymore. I want that beast out of here by tomorrow, before he escapes that cage and comes searching for me in the night!”

Kris looked amused, but managed to whine anyway, “You mean get rid of him? Ahhhh, Mom….”

“I don’t care what you do with him! Feed him to Monty if you want, but I want him out of this house! Him and his exoskeleton buddy!”

“Mom, snakes don’t eat tarantulas…”

“OUT, Kristopher! Out! Out! Out!”

I should have known these words, spoken in motherly haste, would lead to yet another problem, but at the time I wasn’t thinking of anything but my own survival. So when Kris packed up Ziggy and his Twin the following morning and told me he was taking him to school for the Science Lab, I felt truly liberated. My nemesis was gone. Long live Ziggy, as long as he lived somewhere else.

It was about a week later that I received the phone call from Mr. Owens, the Principal at my son’s school. We were actually on a first-name basis, as I was with every teacher and principal who ever had the distinct pleasure of dealing with my Kris. This is not bragging on my part, this is a rather sad fact.

“Hello, this is Paul Owens,” began the conversation.

My blood ran cold, “Yeeessss…?”

“Were you aware that Kris brought a pet tarantula to school?”

My stomach dropped to my knees, “Yeeessss…?”

Principal Owens cleared his throat, “Yes, well…we’ve had a small incident involving the spider. I thought you should know.”
Oh, no.

“It seems one of the children didn’t fasten the lid to the aquarium and Ziggy escaped.”

“Oh…?” I’m sure my voice was cracking.

“Yes…uummm…he ended up in the light fixture above Mrs. Soames’ head and he sort of – dropped - down onto her hair. Well, she passed out, you see, and in the resulting melee, Ziggy was thrown across the room and landed in Lisa Carpenter’s lunchbox, which she proceeded to fling out the window and onto the windshield of Vice Principal Greene’s car.” Mr. Owens explained in a patient, but exasperated tone.

I could feel my heart dripping into my shoes, “It broke the windshield, right?”

“Well, yes…it did that.”

There wasn’t really much I could say or do. I believe to this day that I heard the beginning of a chuckle in Principal Owens’ voice but I can’t prove it. My mind was going over all possible aspects of the event, including whether or not my personal insurance would pay for Vice Principal Greene’s windshield or the psychological trauma caused to Mrs. Soames or poor Lisa Carpenter. And exactly how many Detention days for Kris would be involved, because his being kept after school meant me having to leave work to pick him up. Selfish, I admit, but these things worry a mother.

Still, even after my thoughts and concerns for the victims of the crime at hand, the words that came out of my mouth at that moment were aimed in a completely different direction, “What about Ziggy? Is he alright?”

Principal Owens just sighed, “The last we saw of him, he was crawling off towards the edge of the playground.”

I felt relief. Ziggy was free!