Ask a Terrier: What’s Bugging Budleigh?

Budleigh the Terrier offers professional advice from a licensed dog.

Dear Budleigh,

In a recent column you mentioned eating spiders, which got me thinking, “Ewwww!”

It also got me thinking about recent video of a spider the size of a dinner plate—a dinner plate!—observed in the Amazon rainforest of Peru. It blatantly killed and ate an opossum as though perfectly aware of YouTube.

Now I’m worried that legions of dinner plate-sized spiders are rapidly reproducing, then headed our way. And frankly, there ain’t a Wall big enough!

As you’re comfortable with a certain level of spiders, any advice on where I should hide?

Warmest regards,

Cowering Behind the Furnace, Burlington, VT

Budleigh says:

Dear Coward,

In typical Giant fashion you’ve reacted to overblown reports of “spiders the size of dinner plates” before asking, “Who’s dinner?”

I spend a lot of time close to the ground and know that all spiders are the size of dinner plates if you get close enough. Conversely, coyotes are tiny when they’re waaay over there. Giant scientists refer to this phenomenon as, “I don’t get it either.” Then they avoid uncomfortable questions by moving their research to the Peruvian Amazon rainforest where cell phone reception is poor. And spiders are the size of dinner plates.

Among those scientists hiding in the rainforest was the University of Michigan team of biologists that encountered this rare, gigantic spider of the infraorder Mygalomorphae (Latin for, “Are you shitting me?”) This appears to be the first documented case of a spider eating an opossum, which while historic didn’t brighten the opossum’s day. The scientists admit they were lucky to come across this encounter. Also lucky they were not opossums.

This might not be politically correct to say since I don’t know what a “politically” is, but, You Go, rare, gigantic Peruvian Mygalomorph!

Out of fear, ignorance, and revulsion, many Giants disparage spiders as though they were coworkers. This might be due to spiders’ extravagant number of appendages, although frankly they’ve no more legs than two dogs running side by side. I think it more a matter of the way spiders strut. Especially the big ones – like they’re top of the card on a WWE pay per view.

“That’s right! That’s right!” they bluster. “I’m a predator! And your girlfriend’s ugly! C’mon, you wanna’ get some?”

Nobody wants a piece of that. Certainly not opossums.

As a predator myself legally recognized in 23 states and the District of Columbia, I can respect, even admire spiders – from the gigantic Mygalomorph due to its cunning, down to the common household arachnoid because they’re so tasty.

So, my Mygalomorph brethren, should you plan to emigrate I offer in the language of your homeland, “Vaya con carne!”

But be warned, amigo: I, too, am the size of a dinner plate.

Budleigh

Read more Ask a Terrier columns on the national award-winning blog, Sleeping between Giants: Life, if you could call it that, with a Terrier.