Last week, another big round of garage sailing. (No, that's not a mispell. I've coined a new spelling that captures the romance.)
No big finds, a very old Medalta Butter Crock (#5), a bike for my daughter. And this for the boy:
A taxidermy tarantula.
It's been mounted between 2 panes of glass, so you can view it from the other side and admire it's wooly underbellly where the legs join onto the body. And it's fangs. Very long fangs, almost half an inch, highlighted with lacquer. All in all the spider probably measures 8 inches square.
Now it might seem odd, but the boy has long had some weird phobia about spiders. He blames it on me, accuses me of torturing him with a rubber reproduction when he was younger, of being tormented when camping with tales of the giant spiders in the demon outhouse....
Me, I blame heredity. As a child I was terrified of spiders. As were my sister and brother. He's just carrying the torch, it's in the genes. Our ancestors, once upon a time, probably lived in a land filled with giant spiders and learned fear as a mechanism to survive, fear kept us alive while those fearless in the tribe were captured in webs and devoured.
The boy doesn't buy it.
But I'll help him to beat this fear, I've mounted the spider over his bed. And he'll be so surprised, so grateful at my thoughtfulness...
My daughter was very impressed when I showed her. I offered to let her take it home, but she wasn't so sure that she wanted it, and so now it lurks for him...