It’s unlikely you have a spider the size of a penny prisoner in a Tupperware container on your kitchen counter. Why do I? We are holding the arachnid hostage until we know my daughter doesn’t have any reactions to its’ bite. So far, there isn’t any inflammation around the two little pinpricks on the back of our youngest daughter’s leg. Why the extra caution? We live in Texas, which is home to the black widow and brown recluse. Everybody who lives in the southern states knows the image of these poisonous spiders and thankfully this spider doesn’t fit their description. There’s neither a red hourglass marking on its belly nor a dark violin-shaped marking on its head. But, knowing deadly spiders lurk in the dark corners of Texas makes you suspicious of every spider you come across. Some of you are so fearful of spiders that you won’t even the write the word spider on a piece of paper let alone capture and release or even kill one. Even me writing “spider, spider, spider” irritates you and makes your skin crawl like there are hundreds of ‘em all over you. I was once like you. I could not have handled all of my spider experiences in Texas without having spent a summer with fellow undergraduate biology majors at a research station in the Rocky Mountains. Willing to do anything to keep my 4.0 grade point average that summer, I volunteered when a professor needed help researching the mating behavior of Sierra Dome spiders in nature. It turns out that the Sierra Dome lady spider is very smart, only choosing a mate that has proven himself to be a strong and vigorous fighter before her. Boy spiders actually progress through a series of fighting stages with the final one being a full-on brawl, sometimes to the death of the weaker contestant. I didn’t believe it at first myself. But, I spent that summer alone in the forest with male spiders in petri dishes as my hiking companions searching for the dome-shaped webs built by the lady spiders. Creating a rivalrous love triangle, I’d carefully position two Romeos on opposite sides of the web, pitting them against the other to battle for the chance at procreation. If you think that the Mayweather vs Pacquiao was the “fight of the century” (before it actually happened, of course), then witnessing the incredibly entertaining fighting behavior of two Sierra Dome male spiders would be the “fight of at least two centuries.” And, this one’s free – well, other than a plane ticket to Montana and some hiking books. Having handled so many spiders in the lab and in the field so many summers ago, I can still now find the courage to capture and release and sometimes kill the spiders that trespass on the franch. Most of the time, I let the spiders live as we all know the benefits of a spider’s life, even if we don’t want to admit it. But, I’ve come face to face with creepy tarantulas and although I know they’re harmless, I still kill ‘em because I don’t want them making a home in our kids’ muck boots left outside the back door. I wish I could say I never came across the dreaded black widow spider on the franch. But, one evening late at night, I went out to the barn to check on all the animals with a flashlight. Opening the gate to the cow pen, I decided to straighten their feeder, and as I approached it, the beam of my flashlight illuminated a black spider hanging upside down with a shiny red belly, on a thick, erratically built web between the feeder and the side of the pen. I froze, staring at that hourglass like it was going to tell time. Oh my goodness, it’s the black widow. “Don’t think, don’t think…” I repeated in my mind, as I knew what I had to do. I grabbed a dusty bottle of insecticide from the barn shelf and turned on the outside barn lights. Inches from the plump spider, I held my breath and started squirting it like crazy. It fell to the ground. And then, I anticlimactically finished it off with the heel of my cowboy boot. One last squirt to its lifeless body and I started to breathe again. Then, I screamed. So, with that, you now understand why it’s no big deal for me to have a spider trying to crawl up the slippery sides of the Tupperware next to me as I prepare lunch. Hours later, the pinpricks have disappeared on my daughter’s leg. She asks me to let the spider go, outside. It’s been forgiven. The itsy bitsy spider is now free to go up the spout again.
Why isn’t franch in my dictionary?
It's because my family made it up. It is both a verb and a noun. It is when you are not quite farming and you are not quite ranching. Instead, you're franching. It's like a hobby farm. But, that doesn't fit either, because it is way more than a hobby, it is a life. You spend way more than you make doing it. Yet, you still do it. And every life lesson can be learned on a franch.
FranchLife Lessons Learned
- The Lost Art of Writing Thank You
- Better than Blogging
- A Story by A Second Grader
- Summer Reading
- A Good Life
- How You Know You’re a Francher
- The Best Border Collie Ever
- Get Them Before They’re Gone
- The Old-Fashioned Way
- I’m Not Leaving
- His Mother Said That
- Easy to Make Lasagna
- A Poem in all the Mess
- Christmas Came
- If You Only Want A Sentence, You Better Say So
- God Speed the Plough
- Dinner Conversation
- Dressing Up
- Award-Winning Children or Chickens
- Love (And Little Sleep) Can Make a Fool Out of You
- A Miracle
- Do you Want the Good News or Bad News First?
- Who’s the Farmer’s Wife Now?
- Where’s Waldo?
- Just Ask Siri
- How ’bout a Toy?
- Stay
- Love Beyond Words & Borders
- It’s Chigger Time
- A Spider in a Tupperware
- Puppy Makes History
- Being a Mom Comes First
- That’s Not the End of the Story
- A Knight in Shining Armor
- A Little Bit Like Heaven
- The Grass is Sometimes Greener but it isn’t Home
- New Friends Not in a Row
- Your Life is About to Change
- Where is she?
- Franchsitters
- It’s a Matter of Perspective
- Gifts on the Franch
- Lucky
- The Day a Calf Lived
- How’s the what?
- Wooden Egg Prank Gone Wrong
- Where Did It All Go
- A Beautiful Sunrise
- Life’s Too Good on the Franch
- Sunday Best with Dirty Fingernails
- Rocking Chairs that Don’t Rock
- It’s All About the Breast
- To-Do Lists on the Franch
- The Day He Became a Hero
- Dancing on the Franch
- New Year’s with Chickens
- Exhausted yet I’d Do it all Over Again
- Reflections on Christmas on the Franch
- Not Your Mama’s Manger Scene
- Giving Back What Isn’t Ours
- Did That Just Happen?
- Hide-n-Seek on the Franch
- Man versus Water Pipe
- A Sense of Humor Required
- Unwelcome Guests
- I Won’t Run Out
- Muddy Paw Prints
- All it Takes is a Rubber Band
- Be Careful What You Wish For
- I’m Sorry, But…
- Empty Stomachs on Thanksgiving
- Franching Gets in the Way of Writing
- Animals Don’t Care
- Cow in Labor – Grab a Pitchfork, Don’t Ask Why
- No Parenting Chapter For This
- Time can Kill a Chicken
- Our Thumbs are only Light Green
- Going Broke
- In the Arena with Wild Hogs
- Franch Fashion
- Act Before You Think
- Bad Fences Make Good Neighbors
- The Birds and the Bees Hijacked by a Buck
- The Early Bird gets the Adventure
- The Other Man
- Eat Veggies Not Friends
- Saying Grace with Sincerity
- Am I a Boiled Frog?
- Why isn’t Franch in my Dictionary?
advice to me
- Grammy on Better than Blogging
- Grammy on A Story by A Second Grader
- Poppy on Better than Blogging
- Poppy on A Story by A Second Grader
- Gigi on A Good Life
- Annette on The Best Border Collie Ever
- Lin on Get Them Before They’re Gone
- Kit on The Old-Fashioned Way
- Poppy on The Old-Fashioned Way
- Lin on Easy to Make Lasagna
- Poppy on Easy to Make Lasagna
- Brad on Dinner Conversation
- Brad on Christmas Came
- Lin on Christmas Came
- Lin on God Speed the Plough
- Kelly on God Speed the Plough
- Seth on God Speed the Plough
- Kit on Love (And Little Sleep) Can Make a Fool Out of You
- Poppy on Love (And Little Sleep) Can Make a Fool Out of You
- Poppy on Just Ask Siri
Wait a minute. You mean to tell us you spent a summer as a spider pimp? How did I not know this? What else haven’t you told us?