clipping
My NYers must be recycled. But I can't let them go!
"Spider Woman," by Burkhard Bilger. March 5, 2007.
Favorite excerpts:
Spiders have a bad reputation, largely undeserved. The great majority aren't venomous enough to harm us, or their fangs are too small, or their jaw muscles are too puny, or they simply see no profit in attacking large, indigestible creatures that can crush them with their toes. Unlike snake venom, which is designed to kill vertebrates, spider venom is almost always meant for insects. Its toxins can stop of hornet in mid-flight, but they lack proper tagets in the human nervous system. "If we were wired for spider venoms the way insects are, we would be screwed," (Greta) Binford says.
Time spent in the company of spiders can cure anyone of his sentimentality about nature. In these books (by Jean-Henri Fabre, John Crompton, W.S. Bristowe), the cooperative ant and the hardworking bee give way to much darker figures: mothers who eat their children, neighbors who prey on neighbors, predators who keep their victims bound and sedated, then slowly drawin their body fluids. "Under the tyranny of the stomach, we are all of us, beasts and men alike, ogres," Fabre wrote. "The dignity of labor, the joy of life, maternal affection, the terrors of death: all these do not count, in others; the main point is that the morsel be tender and savory."
Binford played the role of a "Christian conservative housewife" for a couple of years--"I did a lot of cross-stitching. I did a lot of crafts." But she grew restless. In 1987, she enrolled at a branch of Miami University, hoping to become a high-school science teacher. "She didn't have her sights set very high," Ann Rypstra, her genetics professor at the time, told me. "But some students are capable of great things if you nudge them a little, and Greta was nudgeable." One day after class, Rypstra made Binford an offer. She had a great to study spiders in the Amazon basin of Peru, she said, and wanted Binford to join her as an assistant that summer. Binford dismissed the idea at first, but her husband encouraged her to apply.
"The night I got home, I was just bubbling over," Binford says. "I told my husband that I wanted to change my major, that this stuff was wonderful." But her husband seemed distracted. Later that night, he confessed that he'd fallen in love with another woman. "I kind of got used to you being gone," he said.
When Binford told me this story...she didn't try to blame the disaster on destiny or Providence--she had lost her religious faith in the years following that summer. "My whole platform crumbled," she said. "Until that moment, I'd been on a track of what's expected of a woman in rural Indiana, and it just shattered those expectations." Then she smiled. "It was really the best thing that could have happened to me," she said.
...(In 1710, a Frenchman named Bon raised enough spiders to make mittens from their silk; he had to give up the enterprise, though, when all of his workers ate one another.)...
Entomologists are somewhat accustomed to being research subjects. Justin Schmidt, a scientist in Tucson, has been attacked by more than seventy-five species of ants and bees, and has put together an index to rank the pain. it runs from sweat bees ("1.0. A tiny spark has singed a single hair n your arm") to bullhorn acacia ants ("1.8. Someone has fired a staple into your cheek") to bullet ants ("4.0+. Like walking over flaming charcoal with a three-inch nail in your heel"). Spiders, though, are less willing collaborators. "One can ill-treat and tease them for hours on end," Crompton grumbled. "But the peevish creatures will not bite."....
Break over!
"Spider Woman," by Burkhard Bilger. March 5, 2007.
Favorite excerpts:
Spiders have a bad reputation, largely undeserved. The great majority aren't venomous enough to harm us, or their fangs are too small, or their jaw muscles are too puny, or they simply see no profit in attacking large, indigestible creatures that can crush them with their toes. Unlike snake venom, which is designed to kill vertebrates, spider venom is almost always meant for insects. Its toxins can stop of hornet in mid-flight, but they lack proper tagets in the human nervous system. "If we were wired for spider venoms the way insects are, we would be screwed," (Greta) Binford says.
Time spent in the company of spiders can cure anyone of his sentimentality about nature. In these books (by Jean-Henri Fabre, John Crompton, W.S. Bristowe), the cooperative ant and the hardworking bee give way to much darker figures: mothers who eat their children, neighbors who prey on neighbors, predators who keep their victims bound and sedated, then slowly drawin their body fluids. "Under the tyranny of the stomach, we are all of us, beasts and men alike, ogres," Fabre wrote. "The dignity of labor, the joy of life, maternal affection, the terrors of death: all these do not count, in others; the main point is that the morsel be tender and savory."
Binford played the role of a "Christian conservative housewife" for a couple of years--"I did a lot of cross-stitching. I did a lot of crafts." But she grew restless. In 1987, she enrolled at a branch of Miami University, hoping to become a high-school science teacher. "She didn't have her sights set very high," Ann Rypstra, her genetics professor at the time, told me. "But some students are capable of great things if you nudge them a little, and Greta was nudgeable." One day after class, Rypstra made Binford an offer. She had a great to study spiders in the Amazon basin of Peru, she said, and wanted Binford to join her as an assistant that summer. Binford dismissed the idea at first, but her husband encouraged her to apply.
"The night I got home, I was just bubbling over," Binford says. "I told my husband that I wanted to change my major, that this stuff was wonderful." But her husband seemed distracted. Later that night, he confessed that he'd fallen in love with another woman. "I kind of got used to you being gone," he said.
When Binford told me this story...she didn't try to blame the disaster on destiny or Providence--she had lost her religious faith in the years following that summer. "My whole platform crumbled," she said. "Until that moment, I'd been on a track of what's expected of a woman in rural Indiana, and it just shattered those expectations." Then she smiled. "It was really the best thing that could have happened to me," she said.
...(In 1710, a Frenchman named Bon raised enough spiders to make mittens from their silk; he had to give up the enterprise, though, when all of his workers ate one another.)...
Entomologists are somewhat accustomed to being research subjects. Justin Schmidt, a scientist in Tucson, has been attacked by more than seventy-five species of ants and bees, and has put together an index to rank the pain. it runs from sweat bees ("1.0. A tiny spark has singed a single hair n your arm") to bullhorn acacia ants ("1.8. Someone has fired a staple into your cheek") to bullet ants ("4.0+. Like walking over flaming charcoal with a three-inch nail in your heel"). Spiders, though, are less willing collaborators. "One can ill-treat and tease them for hours on end," Crompton grumbled. "But the peevish creatures will not bite."....
Break over!