My first year working at the Rose of Sharon Orphanage, our team was assigned to “pick rocks”.  I didn’t really know what that meant until we got there.  Our job was to go down by a riverbed and pick up big rocks and put them in a truck.  We would eventually take them back to the orphanage and place them on the other side of the wall because the ground was deteriorating there.  What they didn’t tell us was that this dried out riverbed was the hangout spot for tarantulas.  Big, hairy, creepy, crawly, nasty tarantulas.  I nearly dropped the rock I was holding on my toe, when I picked a rock up and found one of the black eyed beasts staring at me, the entire size of the palm of my hand.  As I screamed and dropped my rock (luckily not on my foot), the tarantula stared at me, unmoving, with those beady black eyes…

Some of the boys heard my screams and came running and were elated to find such a big nice tarantula.  They quickly produced an empty Pringles can– clearly they had come prepared.  Then with squeals of excitement and gasps of triumph, they succeeding in prodding the tarantula with sticks and fingers into the Pringles can.  I was amazed.  This type of incident was repeated throughout the afternoon as more tarantulas were found.  By the end of the day, they had 6 or 8 of these beasts and I wondered what their plan was.  I soon found out.

When we returned to the orphanage, they amalgamated all of the tarantulas and simply played with them.  They made little rings out of paper sticks and had two tarantulas fight.  They tried to feed the tarantulas leaves and they even found a toy truck and pushed the tarantula around on the truck.  I was surprised at the ingenuity of these little boys who came up with such creative games to play with spiders.  I would not have enough come close to those black beasts, but these children who owned next to nothing were nothing short of delighted to play with these menacing creatures

One last picture!