They're back!

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On Friday I got a text message from a friend saying they were going away on holiday in a few days and could I possibly take care of some invertebrates please. I said yes and rather to my surprise she pitched up almost immediately with a stack of plastic containers of various shapes and sizes. So I am now the foster carer for three giant African land snails (one called Sauron, not sure about the others), hundreds of isopods of two different varieties (basically fancy woodlice), and five different tarantulas: a curly hair (called Bilbo), a Brazilian black (Mouse), a Mexican red knee (Cocoa), a Martinique pink toe (Julian) and a metallic pink toe (Craig). Some of you may remember that I also cared for these last year, when they were quite small. A year later they are about four times the size! Little One is staying well away. The funny thing was that she wanted to be the one to break the news to Paola, who has a spider phobia. For some reason she thought this would be amusing even though she’s scared of them herself! I said yes, she could tell her, but then they didn’t both appear in the kitchen at the same time and Little One had to go to school. I thought I ought to let Paola know in case she sat near the cages and got a nasty shock, so I explained that she should probably stay away from that corner of the room because of the new temporary residents – and rather to the surprise of myself and even her husband, she wanted to have a look at them! Maybe they hold some kind of horrific fascination… Anyway she said it was OK as long as she knew they wouldn’t be running about. And I had to tell her that Little One had wanted to be the one to tell her about the tarantulas so could she possibly pretend not to know? When Little One got home later I asked if she was going to tell Paola about the tarantulas, and she said actually she didn’t want to, but could she be there when I told her. And then Paola came in and there was no chance to prepare so I just had to tell her the ‘news’ all over again and to give her credit she didn’t say ‘Why are you telling me that again?’ but did a fantastic job of playing along and pretending it was all a surprise. What a charade! Anyway everybody now knows and the spiders are settled in and everything seems to be under control again. All rights reserved. © Text and image copyright Fleur 2026.