Skip to main content

1-19-2023

Page 1

Volume 53 - No. 3

By Cecil Scaglione We’ve all read about or seen on TV some out-of-the-norm animals us humans claim as pets – reptiles, raptors, farmyard critters, jungle denizens, insects, you name ‘em. Some folks claim they’re “comfort” beasts and take them on vacations, airlines flights and trips to the supermarket. If this keeps up, I’m thinking of getting myself a comfort crocodile.

The Paper • 760.747.7119

website: www.TheCommunityPaper.com

email: thepaper@cox.net

January 19, 2023

We have had a diverse set of animals over the years. My sister killed one of them. It wasn’t my pet. I’m not comfortable enough to turn my back on spiders. This was a spider – a black widow. A couple of my kids spotted it under a stairwell and argued about its identity. To stop the arguing, my wife got a jar and went and captured it. Sure enough, it was a full-blooded black widow, the first poisonous creature we could call our own.

The kids popped a popsicle stick into the jar to give it something to crawl on and tossed in live flies, dead moths, tidbits of meat and even some hardboiled yolk. It prospered somehow and even took the time to produce a couple of wisps of a web between the stick and sides of the jar. My sister came to visit on a weekend and, when the kids showed her our latest pet, her reaction was natural. She went screaming back out the

Nervous See Page 2

front door and said she wasn’t returning “until that thing is flushed down the toilet.” She finally was talked back to earth when the boys assured her the beast was contained tightly in a well-screwed-down Mason jar and tucked high on a window sill where she could watch it to make sure it didn’t get close to her. Curiosity overcame her cowardice the next day as she began asking


Turn static files into dynamic content formats.

Create a flipbook
1-19-2023 by The Paper - Issuu