Dear Reader,
When I was a teenager, I worked at the then-brand-new Insect Zoo at the Smithsonian Institution– we had bees, giant cockroaches, mummy lice, tarantulas and more.
Honestly, if I had a reasonable aptitude for the study of science, I’d probably want to be an entomologist. At the Smithsonian, we were exposed to the top scientists and explorers in that field…who usually were literally in the field, exploring.
But I loved the insect world long before this — and after.
I had a pet tarantula in college named Abraxas, and the really wonderful girl I dated at Vassar used to sometimes take the bus down to Lexington, Virginia — where I was in college — with a brown paper bag full of crickets for the tarantula.
Abraxas ended up as a guest at George Mason University in northern Virgina (after I graduated from Washington & Lee University), where he lived out his natural life.
But even now, I’m fond of spiders and bugs. Yes, I like odd things — although they’re not odd to me, since we’re surrounded by insects all the time, everywhere we go.
I loved this recent picture of a Giant Weta chowing down on a carrot, very much like one of our pet rabbits might.
Don’t worry. They’re only found in New Zealand.
Read more at the Daily Mail:
Best,
Douglas Clegg
Tags: bug, Douglas Clegg, Necropolitan Life, Smithsonian, tarantula, weta
