It is the season for love! Just after we got our marriage certificate we stopped and I had to pose for a picture. Get through the article I wrote (for once I rant and rave like people do in blogs:) and see a better shot of the marriage certificate. Love is universial.
SPIDERS IN LOVE!
It is my mission to try to destroy some of the rumors and misconceptions about spiders that people have. If seeing is beliving, these spiders are literally kissing! No photoshop and no question. This is the way a great number of species reproduce. There's no violence, or gore and I dare even say joy.
Many spiders do also have a strange caring side. One species I recently read about actually
becomes the ultimate mother by committing suicide so that her young can eat her body. Now that's gross--but only one species I know of does it. Several species of male spiders commit suicide for the female every time on purpose to mate and in fact will not even start mating until they have forced there body into the females fangs! There is an estimated 35,000 species of spiders and only a small number of them practice any kind of regular cannibalism. We like to demonize what we fear for good reason. But if we are to survive in the long term we must admit our own history to ourselves before we demonize all low and disgusting actions of animals. I was absolutely shocked when I found out how cattle are treated. And how we treat ourselves.
Africa, the mid east, wars.. drugs.. rich getting richer and poor dieing of diease. People acting and not acting have caused more graphic and terrible violence then any spider species ever will or could. If spiders were to disapper completely, I give humanity only about a decade or so. That means just that, we need spiders so much that if all species where to disapper one report I read said that we would litterally be "knee deep in insects". Like the honey bee, the spider gets a less glammous but no less important posion in our world and in every one of our lives. We could not exist without them. Even with all of our technology, spiders are too much of an intergal part of the echo system for us to exist without them. Period. So we should have some respect for them, and give that poor spider in the bathtub a break by letting it run into a jar and then take it out side.
Picture break!
The local Barber shop here in The Dalles not too far from where I live. This is one of a few buisnesses that has been here for many decades. Yeah, yeah, I know I can't save the world and that's not what my website is about. So finding a picture hit some nerves here. I can go ranting and raving blogging like the rest. Maybe for the good or not. Mainly I want people to teach there children to respect all life. Spiders included. So spread the word about my website, and about respecting life. An old poem of unkown origins goes like this, "if you want to live and thrive, let a spider run alive".
We treat cattle in an unbelievably horrible way. They never see the light of day--everything is artificial--even sex--and is so disgusting I can hardly eat beef let alone tell you on a G-rated website how bad it really is. The treatment of cattle and other animals is worse then any spider species could create. And when I learned about it on an educational channel, I found myself wondering how all this came to be. Who the #$#@ thinks this @#$% up! I don't think anybody in there right mind could think something this messed up as how we mass-produce beef unless they were psycoticly violent. If we are ever to leave this planet and possibly find other life forms intelligent as we know it or not, we are going to live with quite a burden. If everyone knew about how beef cattle were treated, the beef industry would go bankrupt. If everyone knew how much oil was destroying our world and how we are going to run out of it.. things would change very quickly. If everyone really KNEW. Saw it with there own eyes in person. Be able to see the behavior of those things which are truly alien to the human condition that we do anyway behind the scenes and hush hush. We are also going to need to make serious changes if we are to really live up to the qualities of being human. Like the way we treat animals. We need not judge it nor fear the actions of other species for we did not create nor did we invent it. All animals when afraid or harmed will bite and will feel pain. Anyone who disagrees must surely be moraly bankrupt. To smash a spider because its' there, because you judge by so-called human values or un-based fear is a very unfair act. We ourselves as a species have a lot of evolution to do before we are able to understand how to live with other species and live without deeply fearing them irrationally.
An example is simple of how we think: Leave it to us to capitalize on the Black widow and other species that are both dangerous to humans and have the most gruesome names and reputations. Despite her reputation as being a widow, she does not have much choice in the matter. If she lets the male free, or he simply goes free, he will die in a matter of hours. Male black widows are born without feeding organs, thus they live for one reason, to mate with the female and provide her with a meal. Yeah, sometimes being a guy can really suck in the animal world. Hell, even in humans, women tend to outlive men by about 10 years. A great many species harmlessly lock jaws in a display that resembles kissing to show submission and mate. Even if disturbed I saw them come back together in what I can only call spider passion! There's no agression, and little or no danger of a male becoming a meal in many species. Spiders and indeed most animals, can be very human. And vice versa.
And now we have come full circle with this. I'm kissing my soon to be wife after finding spiders kissing. The truth is, animals do an amazing number of things that people do. And therefor we should not think ourselves so far different then them. Yes, that is a marriage certificate, the wedding is set for April 4th 2009. I'm excited and ready. I love her very much and trust her with my heart, something I was not sure I could do again. It's incredible how far we have come in a year and I thank her and God deeply for everything she has done for me.
