I am SOOOOO cool. Why chicks don't dig me is a complete mystery to me (besides the aforementioned curse of intelligence and compassion).
Today my greatest arthropod acquisition to date has arrived and I am well pleased. After the unfortunate yet timely death of Cornelius, I thought I would never love a tarantula again. My mother, though, cursing me to forever have a tarantula as a pet and somehow believing that this is a threat, bought me four baby tarantulas. All I can say is, the learning curve for tarantulas is steep. One died the day after it arrived, another got away, and a third ALMOST drowned but I apparently saved it in the nick of time.
Since that was so much fun, I made another order of my own, purchasing SEVEN (!!) more! Two arrived dead, so I'll no doubt get replacements, but that's still the greatest single growth of my arachnid collection ever. Yep, I got some good ones, too, including a rather scary-looking straight-horned baboon tarantula. Now all I need is a Peruvian Centipede, and the chicks will not be able to resist me at all.
Of course, some of my colleagues still look at me like I'm a nutcase. I don't know why that is. Which is more illogical? To invest in a compact, cold-blooded animal that doesn't need to be taken for walks or eat more than once a week, or to share your living quarters with a large predatory vertebrate that shits all over the place?
I say that having a dog as a pet is like breakdancing while holding a cocked and loaded shotgun. I mean, hell, dogs' ancestors ATE our ancestors! I'm sure that if you brought a thawed out primitive man from before the 80's into our time, he'd react with terror if a Brown Labrador came charging up at him, since that was the last thing many of them saw before being shredded into lunchmeat. Sure, you say, but dogs are domesticated. Maybe so, but they've still got the potential to kick your ass if they so decided. The small ones are a possible exception, but they sure could make your ankles sore. In any case, I personally know three people who have been badly mauled by dogs.
Cats are a similar case. Domestic cats are pretty small, but they have big relatives who often include a side of Jim to the menu. You know that if cats could, they'd munch the heads off their owners and drag the corpse around the house until it fell apart from play. At least dogs have a loyalty complex.
Why would you want a dirty, smelly, disease-carrying endotherm when you could live perfectly happily with a tarantula? Hell, the worst thing a tarantula can do is give you a red welt if you really mess with them. They don't have fleas and they don't have any diseases in common with us and they don't leave big lumpy rancid steamy lumps of feces lying right in the middle of the room. Just because they're spiders, people fear them. How pathetically short-sighted.
My hissing cockroaches have been reproducing like crazy, too. Woo-hoo!
