Bedtime Stories with R.A. Spratt

A Tall Tale about Floating Leaves... and Vegetarian Spiders

April 21, 2021 R.A. Spratt Season 1 Episode 61
Bedtime Stories with R.A. Spratt
A Tall Tale about Floating Leaves... and Vegetarian Spiders
Show Notes Transcript

When Tammy and Mum take the dog for a walk, a hovering autumn leaf makes them wonder about the possible existence of vegetarian spiders and the dangers of tofu hail.

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Hello and welcome to Bedtime Stories with me, RA Spratt. Today’s story is…

 

A Tall Tale of Floating Leaves and Vegetarian Spiders

 

Here we go…

 

Mum and Tammy were going for a walk. Tammy had not wanted to go, but Mum had gone to the gym and when she got back was disgusted to find Tammy still in her pyjamas lounging around and Vanessa still in bed. It was the last couple of days of the school holidays and standards had slipped all the way to rock bottom.

‘So which one of you took the dog for a walk while I was out?’ asked Mum. ‘I’m surprised you came home and put your pyjamas back on.’

‘That was Vanessa’s job,’ said Tammy.

‘But surely, you would have seen how much the poor dog wanted to go out and taken pity on him,’ said Mum. ‘You’re the one sitting right here next to the dog.’

Stanley wagged his tale. He loved it when Mum came home. Mum always had dog treats in her pockets. But he also loved sitting in the warm spot in front of the heater next to Tammy so he didn’t actually get up.

‘I’m so sorry Mum,’ said Vanessa, calling down from upstairs. ‘I’ll do it after I’ve had breakfast.’

‘No,’ said Mum. ‘I will do it now, before the poor dog’s bladder explodes and makes a mess all over my nice carpet.’

‘The carpet is not nice,’ said Tammy. This was true. They had particularly grotty un-nice carpet. 

‘It is better than it will be when the dogs bladder explodes,’ said Mum. ‘And also, don’t think I haven’t noticed that you’re breaking the metre from the heater rule.’

‘So is Stanley,’ said Tammy.

‘Stanley doesn’t have an understanding of the metric measuring system,’ said Mum. ‘He also doesn’t speak English. I hold you to a higher standard. If you don’t care for the flammability for you own pyjamas, you should at least be concerned about the flammability of the dog. You’re setting a bad example to him.’

‘He’s your favourite,’ said Tammy.

‘Yes, yes he is,’ said Mum. ‘He’s nicer than you and he voluntarily eats vegetables.’

Stanley wagged his tale.

‘He also eats possum poo, and rabbit poo and kangaroo poo…’ listed Tammy.

‘Well it’s probably got more nutritional value that those lollies you eat,’ said Mum. ‘Put your shoes on, you’re coming with me.’

‘But what about Vanessa?’ demanded Tammy. ‘Why aren’t you making her come?’ 

‘Because if she came too, you’d both fight and I’d be driven insane and throw you both in the creek. Then the police would come and arrest me, and there would be no one to walk Stanley tomorrow.’

‘It’s not fair,’ said Tammy.

‘Not fair to the poor dog, no,’ agreed Mum as she fetched the leash. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll make Vanessa take him out after lunch. That way he’ll get two walks.’

Tammy took about ten seconds to get ready. Much as she complained about having to do it. She actually secretly enjoyed walking the dog and wanted to come.

Once they were out in the sunshine, walking past pretty autumn trees Mum couldn’t stay cross. She even waited patiently while Tammy jumped as hard as she could on the grate over the storm water drain to see how loud a noise she could make. It was a loud one. 

Stanley was enjoying the walk too. There was so much to sniff. The leaves on the trees were just starting to turn. And there were less tourists about because the weather was getting cooler.

‘Look,’ said Tammy. ‘That leaf looks like it’s floating.’

Mum wasn’t really paying attention. She was lost in her own thoughts about work, and how she would have to do some when they got home. She turned in the direction Tammy was pointing and it took her brain a moment to process what it was seeing. There was an autumn leaf caught in a cobweb. Except it was hard to see the fine cobweb so it looked like the leaf was just hovering in mid-air.

‘It’s like magician’s illusion,’ said Mum. 

‘I wonder what the spider thinks about it,’ said Tammy.

‘It must have been a very disappointing discovery this morning,’ said Mum. ‘Just think – the poor spider wakes up and goes out to check it’s web to see if it’s caught any nice flies to munch on and all it’s got is one enormous leaf.’

‘Perhaps the spider doesn’t mind because it’s vegetarian,’ said Tammy.

This idea caught Mum’s interest. ‘Now there’s a thought,’ said Mum. ‘Is there such thing as a vegetarian spider?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Tammy.

‘What are they teaching you at school if they aren’t sharing these important pieces of information with you?’ demanded Mum.

‘Not much,’ said Tammy.

‘They teach you algebra and spelling,’ said Mum. ‘But leave you in the dark about the dietary preferences of arachnids. I’ve a good mind to complain to the headmaster.’

‘Maybe it’s just this spider that’s vegetarian,’ said Tammy. ‘Because he doesn’t like the taste of flies.’

‘Hmm,’ said Mum. ‘That would be understandable. Flies spend a lot of time around poop.’

‘Like Stanley,’ said Tammy.

‘Or perhaps,’ said Mum. ‘The spider became vegetarian because he or she was concerned about cruelty to flies.’

‘Is anybody concerned about cruelty to flies?’ asked Tammy.

‘Spiders might be,’ said Mum. ‘They might exist on a higher empathetic plain and feel or sorts of sympathetic emotions for their fellow creatures which we, with our primitive brains can’t even imagine.’

‘Really?’ said Tammy.

‘Well they’ve got lots more eyes than us,’ said Mum. ‘Is it really so much or a stretch to imagine they’ve got a bit more empathy as well?’

‘Yes,’ said Tammy. ‘I don’t like spiders.’

‘I know,’ said Mum. 

That’s Tammy didn’t like spiders of any kind. She didn’t like the teeny tiny ones. And she really really didn’t like the great big ones. And living in Australia in a country town they had a lot of really big spiders. 

Specifically huntsman. They got them in the house, which was bad enough. But the house was big and if you saw a spider you could go to another room. What Tammy really hated was when a huntsman got in the car. The car was not big and you couldn’t leap out of it when it was travelling at 80km per hour.

‘Remember that time at the service station,’ said Mum. 

‘Never speak of that day,’ said Tammy.

They had stopped to fill up the car with petrol and discovered a huntsman hiding in by the backdoor of the car. Tammy had yelled at Mum so loudly and for so long, about how she was never ever getting in the car ever ever again, that a crowd of concerned bystanders had started to gather. 

It was unusual to see a seven year old with such powerful voice projection. 

When Tammy drew breath briefly mid tantrum, Mum had turned to the crowd and explained the situation with just one word, ‘huntsman’. 

The bystanders immediately understood. If Mum had announced that she intended to burn the car down and walk home, she would have found several sympathetic volunteers to help her. 

Very few people like huntsmen. The scary thing is that they sit so still, that when you finally notice them, you know that they’ve been there all along, just centimetres away. And yet, when you try to catch them, they move with the evasive speed and agility of ninjas.

I wonder if you get vegan spiders as well,’ said Mum. ‘That would be really hard. Because not only would they not be able to eat flies, but they wouldn’t be able to eat cheese or egg either.’

‘So if a cheese or an egg got stuck in their web,’ said Tammy. ‘they’d just have to leave it there.’

‘Exactly,’ said Mum. They’d have to wait for some tofu to blow by, or some kale.’

‘You don’t often hear about tofu storms,’ said Tammy.

‘Not any more,’ said Mum. ‘It used to be quite common when I was a girl.’

‘Really,’ said Tammy.

‘Oh yes,’ said Mum. ‘Tofu was very fashionable in the 1980’s. So parents served it to their kids for dinner all the time. But it still tasted like tofu, so kids would throw it out the window when their mother wasn’t looking. Then the tofu would get caught up on the wind and billow about. And when that happened, in thousands of households across the nation simultaneously, it would cause great clouds of tofu that would roll over the country side.

‘Clouds?’ said Tammy.

‘Yes, said Mum. ‘Cumulus and stratus. Just like regular clouds. They would form their own weather system. The low air pressure at higher altitudes would pull great plumes of tofu up into the upper atmosphere where it would freeze at the high temperatures, then it would be too heavy and drop down in great brown shards of hail tofu.’

‘Hail tofu,’ said Tammy.

‘It was incredibly dangerous,’ said Mum. ‘Dozens of people died.’

‘Really?’ asked Tammy.

‘Maybe, nearly died,’ conceded Mum. ‘But it did cause terrible damage to cars. The hail tofu put dents in the bodywork, and they made the cars smell like tofu so they were undrivable.’

‘It must have been a great time for vegetarian spiders back then,’ said Tammy.

‘We didn’t have vegetarian spiders in the 80’s said Mum. ‘which makes me wonder, if vegetarian spiders were invented by an evil genius living under a volcano in a secret laboratory. And that is why we don’t have tofu weather systems any more because she released her vegan spiders on the world and it put the eco system into balance.’

‘Then it wouldn’t be an evil genius scientist,’ said Tammy. ‘It would be a good genius scientist.’

‘That doesn’t sound as fun,’ said Mum. ‘Perhaps it was an evil genius scientist, but she was bitten by a vegan spider, you know like spiderman was bitten my a radioactive spider, and the venom of the vegan spider turned her good.’

‘Why would a vegan spider bite a human?’ asked Tammy. ‘They don’t eat meat.’

‘Perhaps the evil genius scientist had kaleslaw for lunch and the spider got confused because she smelled like vegetables,’ said Mum. ‘Probably the gas from the volcano effected the spider’s thinking.’

‘You’re ridiculous,’ said Tammy.

‘That’s what the regular spider said to the vegan spider,’ said Mum. ‘But how wrong were they.’

‘Spiders don’t talk,’ said Tammy.

‘They don’t talk to you,’ said Mum. ‘But who knows they might be quite chatty with nice people.’

‘So they don’t talk to you then either,’ said Tammy.

‘Good one,’ said Mum.

 

The end.

 

Bagheera kiplingi

The genus name is derived from Bagheera, the black panther from Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book, with the species name honoring Kipling himself.[3] Other salticid genera with names of Kipling's characters are Akela, Messua, and Nagaina. All four were named by George and Elizabeth Peckham in 1896. 

Only the male was described in 1896; the female was first described 100 years later by Wayne Maddison.[5] 

 

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