So yesterday, Kathryn's tarantula, Imelda, looked like this:
It looked like that for a long time. I know it was a long time because it was my job to keep Kathryn from seeing it. Apparently even children who keep tarantulas have feelings. Though possibly not feelings you or I would recognize as such.
Luckily it looked like that long enough for me to google "upside down tarantula" and learn that it was not, in fact, dead. (Sharon, for her part, googled "is it safe to flush a tarantula," so sewers of New Jersey, you narrowly escaped some serious made-for-SyFy-channel movie shit last night.)
This is how tarantulas molt. They lie still on their backs for nearly a day, then they split their skins and crawl out, all soft and floppy. Then they inflate themselves and grow. Sometimes nearly doubling in size.*
That's right. They lie perfectly still and defenseless for a whole day just before they grow larger. I'm considering this last time a wasted opportunity.
Today, Imelda hasn't done much. She's stayed almost perfectly still in her floppy new skin, just taking a moment here and there to SHARPEN HER FANGS. Oh my god she is sitting right at the edge of the terrarium glass and scraping her fangs back and forth. Just like Whoopi Goldberg about to shave Mister with that flat-edge razor in "The Color Purple." Shink shink shink. Except tarantula fangs aren't made of metal plus nobody had to pass me an entire boxes of tissues when the movie was over.
Shink. Shink. Shink.
Bonus fang view:
You probably shouldn't look at any of these pictures if you're afraid of spiders. Maybe I should have put that at the beginning of the post.
*No outside sources were consulted for this fact-like information. Just my nightmares.