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Chapter 9

All Spiders Great and Small

"How many are your works, 0 LORD!
In wisdom you made them all;
the earth is full of your creatures".
Psalm 104:24

    A young, innocent face looked up into mine.
Baro smiled and held up his clenched fist toward my waiting jar. Suddenly I heard a bloodcurdling scream ... and realized it was me.
Neil came running from somewhere and found me cowering in the back room.
"What happened?" he blurted, alarmed and out of breath. "Are you all right?"
"You won't believe what I just did," I confessed, wincing. "They're going to laugh me to scorn. I can't face anyone."
"They said you ran from a grasshopper?" Even he could not believe that report.
"No, not a grasshopper. It was a big, hairy spider. That little kid was holding it in his hand." I shuddered at the thought. "I was going to put an ero into a jar, but it wasn't a grasshopper and it actually jumped at me." I buried my face in the palms of my hands.
    I had asked some children to help me collect ero (pronounced "eh-dough"). Ero was, I thought, the word for grasshopper. Since insects, particularly all shapes and sizes of grasshopper, swarmed everywhere all the time in great numbers, I figured if you can't lick 'em, then collect 'em. I went ahead giving each child ten toea (equivalent to ten cents) for a specimen that was reasonably intact, in hopes of mounting each on a little straight pin and building a colorful collection. The endless variety fascinated our whole family.
The child who brought me the ero that morning had been unaware of the distinction the larger world makes between six-legged and eight-legged creatures, not to mention my own personal distinction, which was rather meaningful to me. I either ruined Baro's day or gave him a story to tell around the fire pit for many a year to come.
Moments later, as the memory of my screams replayed in my head, I cringed with embarrassment.
"I'll never live this one down," I said to my family, and despaired of returning to the front door and the incredulous villagers. Neil stood in for me.
"In America," he explained from the porch, "there are spiders that look like this one, and if they bite you, you'll die." Graciously he did not mention that I react this way to all spiders.
By the time I had the nerve to go to the door again myself, a sympathetic group remained, saying, "Koneo, Heto Hama" ("Sorry"), and assuring me that this ero would not kill anybody.
"Look," exclaimed Baro's father as he played with the now half-dead spider. He held it up in front of my face. Even given its semiconscious state, I was not going to risk a closer look. Owarape Ali jumped up to the porch step. Shaking his fist and threatening the children, he yelled, "Never scare the red woman again. Don't you know there are ero in America that kill people?"
    As a result of this incident, I found out that the fuller meaning of ero is "edible six- to eight-legged animal." In the Folopa scheme of things, the number of legs was not as significant as whether or not it could be used for food. The idea of eating spiders had never really occurred to me before. Perhaps they thought I was collecting them to eat. (Why else would anyone want ero? )
What was a person terrified of all insects and spiders trying to prove living in the middle of a tropical rain forest teeming with the biggest, baddest bugs in the whole world? I kept trying to remind myself that I had made this decision. I hearkened once again to the informal "ceremony" in the director's office where Neil and I had committed to this task, for better or for worse. I remembered his asking if I was aware of the possible difficulties. I hoped, of course, that most of the experiences would be in the better category. Alas, the worse column was beginning to fill in, with bugs and spiders coming somewhere near the top of the list. Added to all this, the Folopa people knew I was afraid of something as ridiculous as a spider.
    My introduction had begun almost immediately with the giant cockroach. But this was not to be my only enemy. In the bug arena were the ones Neil and I called "rain bugs." These little guys waited until it rained (which was often) to come out of somewhere (nobody knew where) and they were attracted to light. As our house at night looked like a veritable lighthouse at the edge of an ocean of dark forest, every rain bug around set a direct course for it.
    Resembling small flying ants, they seemed to have no trouble getting into the house. On a particularly bad night, thousands upon thousands of them swarmed around our heads. We had no choice but to turn out the lights and go to bed. The next morning I would sweep the entire house and throw dustpans full of them out the window.
Then there were the nights when moths of every size, shape and color suddenly appeared. Or occasionally it was red stinkbugs. Something about the combination of sun during the day and heavy rain at night brought these to life.
    The bug night that crowned them all was boro ero night. A boro ero is only a brown, grasshopper-like insect with sharp claws on the ends of its legs. It looks innocuous, constantly changing location, flying from the wall, to the floor, to the sink, to my skirt. But unfortunately, for reasons known only to their Creator, they like to crawl inside clothing, and have been known with the proper provocation to bite. And it is hard to imagine not being provoked when a hand on the other side of the garment is tearing at it and screaming, "Get it out, Mommy!" My children began to develop fond childhood memories of chasing down ero and passing them out the door or window, where anxious hands waited to cook and eat them for supper.
Fortunately, these nuisance bugs came out in the evening, so I had all day to psyche myself up. Cockroaches, however, jumped out of cupboards and holes at almost any time. These pests came in two basic sizes: large and extra-large. I did scientific studies on cockroach eggs that bore depressing results. For the large variety, one egg yielded four new roachlettes. The extra-large type produced no fewer than eighteen. For someone of my culture who could not comfortably allow cockroaches to live in her home, this was distressing news.
    Another annoying creature was the nisili sale. These shiny black millipedes glided slowly up and down the walls from their feeding places in the sago-leaf thatched roof. It was hard to decide which was worse-the noxious odor they emitted or their droppings, which rained down continually and, after accumulation, resembled coffee grounds.
    Putting up with insects was exasperating, but nothing made my skin crawl more than a spider. They would leap on me from holes, slide down thread poles in front of my face, scamper like a feather across my bare feet, submit to being delimbed by a child sitting next to me in church, even turn up crumpled in a little heap in my bed. Hiking up a trail once, I came within a handbreadth of walking directly into what, spanning some twelve inches, I was sure was the biggest spider known to man. Later, when I saw the movie Arachnophobia, I recognized all the leading spiders.
I tried unsuccessfully to overcome my fear of bugs and spiders. The next-best strategy, I decided, was to look as if I had overcome my fear. One day I was hoping to demonstrate what an old hand I was getting to be at dealing with the granddaddy bug of them all, called Yoou. Before that fateful day I had killed and preserved quite a few of these thick-bodied walkingstick bugs. Of all the bugs I had ever seen, this one was the most unique. About six inches in length, it was covered with brown plates, thorns and bumps. It had a head that turned with eyes that followed a moving object. This particular specimen was brought by a young boy who handed me a branch on which the creature had fastened itself. I could see the insect clearly on the limb, so there would be no surprises. I thought it would be impressive if I managed to get it into a large canning jar by myself, all the while showing no fear.
    As I lowered the section of branch gently into the opening of the jar, the creature jumped. It all happened so fast. I saw it coming and thought I would brush it away before it attached itself to me. I dropped the jar, grabbed my skirt and gave it a shake. The timing was perfect. Instead of landing on the outside of my skirt, it hit the underside as the fabric came up. Instantly, as the thought occurred to me that it would find its next perch somewhere on my bare leg, an involuntary and prolonged wail of anguish came out of my mouth. I began jumping up and down as I yelled and flicked wildly at my skirt, trying to dislodge the bug. The first toss probably sent him across the room, but I kept it up for several seconds just to make sure.
The escapee was quickly recaptured. I tried to compose myself but it was too late. Everyone in the vicinity even vaguely aware of what was happening broke into hysterical laughter.
Was I now to become nothing more than someone to laugh at? Who would take me seriously or think I had anything to offer in this ministry?
    It was true that there were places in the world where hairy tarantulas leaped across rooms and cockroaches as big as bedroom slippers glided along floors in the night. Thank the Lord, I had not run into any of those! But I was married to Superman. How could I ever be Superwoman with my phobias? Humble creatures of God's creation were nibbling away at the image I had hoped to portray.
It was impossible to hide my shortcomings, so there was no choice but to appear before everyone as just what I was—weak and fearful.

Chapter 10 >