The Frog and the Tarantula

Hiya! Glad to see you today. Que pasa? Grab a coffee and a treat and mosey on over. Hope you’re feeling better than I am. Got a temperature of 102 and my doctor has put me on a three-day quarantine with some kind of flu. Could be H1N1 but probably not. Anyway, that means two more days off work – Monday, Tuesday. Have to wear a mask if I do go anywhere.

Say, I was watching a program last night about the Amazon Rain forest. Lots of amazing things to see there. One thing that I took an interest in was the Amazon Burrowing Tarantula. In itself, it is just a big ugly spider with a leg span of 16 cm. It lives in the ground and waits by the opening of its burrow. When something wanders too close, the spider pounces, sinks its poisonous fangs into its prey and bingo – lunch is served.

However, there is a little greenish brown frog that lives on the ground in the Rain forest. It’s nowhere near the size of the spider but it wanders into the spider’s burrow and actually lives there. When the spider’s foot touches the frog, sensors in the foot read the chemicals on the frog’s skin and the spider knows the frog wouldn’t be very tasty.

There are more ants in the Amazon Rain forest than anything else (hey, now, I just realized that our house has something in common with the Rain forest!) The ants would normally eat the spider’s eggs and spiderlings. However, the little frog eats the ants in the spider’s nest. So they have a mutually beneficial relationship. The frog helps the spider by eating the ants and in turn, the frog has a sheltered place to live – free from predators of its own. How about that, eh!

See ya!

Bob

Comment from Chris in Toronto:

I've actually had cactus ice cream and it was quite delicious! Also cactus paddle salad - can recommend it!

Have a good one! Chris

Comment from Paul in Tokyo:

Well, at least in this country you can rest assured that the “doggie” refers to whom will eat the contents of what is in the bag rather than what is in the bag itself.

As you could easily guess, this is why I do not make service stations a regular stop when I'm looking for something to eat.

Of course, the longest standing food joke, at least with visitors to this country has been a sports drink which is spelled Calpis. It's not bad, but the way the Japanese pronounce it it sounds exactly like Cow Pi*S. and offers to share a glass of that on a warm day by an otherwise gracious Japanese host has shocked more than just a few Gajin.

Well, I'm off to look for something to eat for lunch… on foot.

Cheers.