Hooray for Mothers

For Mother’s Day, I wanted to share a story told by John Slaughter when he gave his Second Saturday presentation on Invertebrates of North Texas at the Refuge, on April 14, 2012.

John told the group that he grew up in Illinois – “No big spiders there”, he said…then the family went visiting in Arkansas and John was allowed to play outdoors – he was about 5 years old at the time, he believes.  He found a very large spider and carefully took it indoors to play with. 

When his mother, wondering why John was playing so quietly, asked just what was he doing, he showed her his find.  John says “this was the ‘crossroad’ of my life”.  If Mother had screamed and stomped on the spider, that would have been the end of my interest.  But!  Instead she calmly looked at the spider, explained, “you’ve found a tarantula.  I used to play with those when I was your age.” 

This was the beginning of my life-long interest in spiders and related species!

Happy Mother’s Day

And speaking of Mother’s Day, the four Killdeer eggs in the nest in front of the Visitor Center hatched yesterday and all have moved on out into the fields behind the Visitor Center!

Second Saturday nature programs, sponsored by Hagerman NWR and the Friends of Hagerman, are set for May 12.   Activities include a nature walk led by Jack Chiles, weather permitting,  Richard Baker presenting on “Prescribed Burns of National Wildlife Refuges”, “Wildflowers” program for ages 4 – 10 (reservations needed for this one) and Nature Photography Club meeting.  See “activities” on the Friends website for details.