One of the VPs at work found a tarantula in his back yard and made it a pet. He keeps it in a glass cage on his desk. The spider’s name is “Fred.”
Recently he found another spider, whom his daughter named “Prinze.” He brought Prinze to the office and put it in Fred’s cage just to see what would happen.
What happened was: Fred and Prinze started fighting.
Fred versus Prinze: They’ve got legs, and they know how to use them.
We watched the fight for a few minutes. Then they stopped fighting, so we went back to work.
The next day, the VP sent us an email: “Prinze appears to be mulch. It happened overnight. Fred is covering the body with gravel.”
Here’s what we don’t know: did Prinze die a horrible, violent death because Fred was protecting his territory?
Or did Prinze die an ecstatic, wonderful death because they actually mated and Fred (who may be female) finished up by biting his head off?
The fact that we don’t know seems like a life lesson of some kind. But damned if I know what it is.* Do you?
*Other than never have carnal relations with a tarantula, but I pretty much knew that already.
i can’t believe i innocently opened your blog and had to face a picture of FIGHTING SPIDERS. i may never go online again.
ok, i will definitely still go online. but dude, the cool picture of you in that jacket is only a link, and SPIDERS get to appear right there on the page? it’s nearly sacrilege. oh, my eyes.
:(
what i learned from this story by patricia
spiders are icky. boys are weird.
the end
hmm. i guess i kind of already knew all that. oh well. maybe i’ll learn something tomorrow.
Sounds like Fred is a killer. You may want to make sure that his cage is securely closed.
I’m having graphics download issues, so I’m forced to use my imagination. It doesn’t seem like the best use of my time, though.
(clearly this guy needed a third spider named “jr.")
the lesson i learned is: if you’re going to kill or fuck someone, do it while no one’s watching.
Hmmm. I’m imagining how this all started. So this guy encountered a tarantula in his backyard, presumably at close quarters, and he...caught it (at even closer quarters) and put it in a cage? I am not sure this is exactly what I would do, which I think would go more along the lines of “run screaming and vow never to leave the house again.” I mean there are TARANTULAS out there. You can’t be too careful.
Damn, Bryan already made my joke. Or, how about they really did mate, and now none of us have a shot at Buffy? Or how about two mature adults are making the same joke that a little girl more subtly made?
great. thanks. i’m so glad i started the day by wanting to throw up.
I think you need to go right out and catch four more spiders. Call them Junior, Sara, Michelle and Gellar. Then put them all into one cage and see if:
a) they have an orgy
or
B) they fight like mad she devils.
then, report the results to us.
Oh, yeah, post a few more cute pictures (of you, not of the icky spiders!).
bryan - that is EXCELLENT advice.
never have evidence.
Lesson learned:
you work with some weeeeeird characters.
Dear God!
Note to self: stay far far away from the Giant Spider Infested Land that Greg lives in.
eeep!
I feel like this has something to do with schroendinger’s cat, right? If you have a box with two spiders, according to the principle, both spiders are actually alive and dead at the same time. Therefore, if you opened the box tomorrow morning there’s just as a good a chance the little prinze is alive and well again. Voila!
Where I come from, science = magic, and the real lesson here is that spider fighting has replaced “talking about the OC” as the new office pastime.
I could have sworn that I made some silly remarks in your comments section a month or two ago about Harry Belafonte’s “Banana Boat” song, and the presence of deadly black tarantulas therein, but for the life of me, I can’t find it anywhere.
Perhaps you wisely deleted it, young Howard.
But anyway, I was going to say that when I turn to your blog for humor and relaxation, the last thing I generally want to hear about are tarantulas. Which reminds me also that I recently watched Naked Lunch, which as you’ll recall features the two typewriter insects fighting, and one eating the other (Peter Weller’s William Lee’s Craig Nova eating Ian Holm’s Tom Frost’s Martinelli, and no, I don’t mean that Martinelli I wrote up in your comments section previously).
You should WARN people before you post that kind of shit. That was worse than spoilers, because spoilers don’t have HAIRY LEGS THAT COULD CRAWL ON ME WHILE I SLEEP OH MY GOD.
This is a sad day. If Sarah hates hairy legs that crawl on her when she sleeps, I officially have no chance.
I thought it was only praying mantis females who bit the head off their mates during sex.
I think bryan is definitely right about what the lesson is, but I think the thing to worry about is
WHAT IS UP WITH ALL THE BIG SPIDERS IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD?
Greg, sweet poppet, please don’t do that to me again. We hates the spiderses. They’re nasty, tricksy things.
The most disturbing thing about this whole entry is that I just moused over the picture with a sort of demented horror/hope that I would be able to click to make it bigger. Thank the lord for small favors.