We have a really cool little orb weaver spider on our back porch. Every night, at 7 p.m. the little dude builds a fresh web. It takes it an hour. More entertaining than cable. It drops down huge strands, and then builds cross strands and then spends an hour going in smaller and smaller spiral circles. Then, it goes to the center of its web, rips out a hole and sits there and waits. It's between the size of a nickle and a quarter in diameter with its legs. Zule, Sweatone and I go watch it and then when moths get close to the web we cheer for the spider, but so far, we've not seen any moth death. We were confused what kept knocking down the web, b/c the little guy rebuilt it every night. Well, this morning, when I actually got up early, I had our answer. It destroys the web, rolling the entire thing up like a sleeping bag and drops it to the ground before climbing into a little brown nest. Apparently, its nocturnal. Its really really cool. I want to take some pictures of it, but I don't think my camera has a high enough resolution. In addition, I shall have to tell my relatives not to just kill the thing. I'm not one to step on bugs even. And if I see a turtle stranded in the road, I'll get out and tap it on its shell so it pulls in its head and then I'll scoot it across the road.
I have to keep Sweatone from knocking down the web. Let me tell you something else I did not know until I had kids and it blew me away. When my alpha test kid came along, Dbot, I was horrified that she would kick and jump on our pet rabbit, pull dogs' ears, or otherwise pester and harrass animals. She would hit people and bite them. Now, ten years later, beta test Sweatone would love nothing more than to jump on a bug, put vaseline in the cat's fur, or generally smash things. Apparently, humans are NOT born with any type of empathy. You have to teach them. And apparently, if you don't teach kids empathy by a certain age, they never learn it. How weird is that? I always thought that empathy was like a feeling or something. My toddler has no idea if he steps on the spider it will die, he just would be like "I squish spider, now make it work again". He grabs fistfuls of fireflies, and kind of squishes them sometimes, and gets really upset that they won't fly. Meanwhile, I'm flipping out, yelling "Sweatone, GENTLE HANDS WITH THE FIREFLIES". I think humans are just inquisitive, but without empathy, that curiosity must translate to cruelty in some instances.