Spiders

I like spiders. I don't want to touch one. I'm as happy without them as I am with them. But as creepy crawlies go, spiders are o.k. They catch insects and wrap them for tasty snacks. Wilbur, the pig, would have been an anonymous pork belly without Charlotte. And camping with Girl Scouts would have been just another adventure of knot-tying and Dutch oven cooking. On this weekend, my troop of 10-year-olds arrived at Camp Butterfly. They ran to the cabins and started squealing. Turned out, spiders lived in the cabins. Sweeping the floors helped, but not enough. The rabble-rousers muttered about sneaky spiders lurking in corners. I assembled the troop at the picnic shelter and asked, "Has anyone here actually been bitten by a spider?" Half the troop raised their hands. Not the response I anticipated. Although, now that I think about it, no good answer exists to that question. Eventually I found a better way to reassure my precious charges--sleep with spiders who probably won't bite or sleep with leaders who will bite. Problem solved. In the years since, I don't know that any of the girls learned to like spiders. What I'm really glad for is that my Girl Scout leader days passed before bedbugs took hold. I wouldn't want to be the Girl Scout leader trying to convince a troop that "sleep tight, don't let the bedbugs bite" is simply a children's rhyme. My bet is that bedbugs bite just as much as leaders, though not as much as spiders.