A day in the life...
I had never seen a huntsman spider.
Don’t get me wrong, I had heard of them, but never seen one. My experience of Australian spiders so far has been a few wolf spiders like I would find at home, an adult female redback (which is a cousin of the black widow), and a golden orb web spider.
Ya… huntsmen are bigger.
That said, a colleague assured me that the huge, twisted shape in the corner of my classroom above the air conditioner was dead (“In this heat they don’t last long…”, she said…).
So, when a student in my year 10 group finally noticed the corpse the next day, I wasn’t terribly concerned.
"It's dead. Just leave it!” I commanded as several students stared dubiously at the twisted form on the ceiling.
Of course, you need to understand my class to really understand. They are… disengaged learners with a lot of personality. They like the back of the class… which is where the A/C is. I knew that the spider would be an issue, I just didn’t expect so many to have a general unease.
Still, apparently even sitting a desiccated spider corpse is better than sitting at the front of the class.
Directly under the spider were two boys. One was a big kid (6’2 and a solid 210), and the other is a tough-as-nails kid who has seen it all. Neither looked entirely at ease there, but they would be damned if they let something a canuck wasn’t scared of bother them.
Now, our school has a phone policy, and on this day I was calling out a kid who was using his phone despite a warning. I’d sent him to the hall to chat with the Head Teacher and was just returning to class to see a kid chuck an apple at the dead huntsman.
Yeah... It wasn’t dead.
The thing twitched and someone screamed. The apple got a second toss and the big kid booked it. I didn’t even see him move. It was like a dimensional shift.
The spider dropped and the tough kid went to war, using his chair like a lion tamer. Kids were boiling over desks, I was standing, slack-jaw, by the door. People were screaming, the HT was staggering back, almost knocked over by the big-kid from the corner who had warped into the hall…
The tough kid won the war quickly, stomping twice on the corpse to make sure and then sat down like nothing had happened. Everyone else quietly returned to their seat until the bell. The HT blinked at me, to which I responded, “Spider.”
She nodded and left.
After I dismissed them (literally within 5 Minutes) there was a lockdown (genuine, not a drill) over a bomb threat, to which they responded calmly and with disdain…
I am told that kid with warp-speed never runs…
Don’t get me wrong, I had heard of them, but never seen one. My experience of Australian spiders so far has been a few wolf spiders like I would find at home, an adult female redback (which is a cousin of the black widow), and a golden orb web spider.
Ya… huntsmen are bigger.
That said, a colleague assured me that the huge, twisted shape in the corner of my classroom above the air conditioner was dead (“In this heat they don’t last long…”, she said…).
So, when a student in my year 10 group finally noticed the corpse the next day, I wasn’t terribly concerned.
"It's dead. Just leave it!” I commanded as several students stared dubiously at the twisted form on the ceiling.
Of course, you need to understand my class to really understand. They are… disengaged learners with a lot of personality. They like the back of the class… which is where the A/C is. I knew that the spider would be an issue, I just didn’t expect so many to have a general unease.
Still, apparently even sitting a desiccated spider corpse is better than sitting at the front of the class.
Directly under the spider were two boys. One was a big kid (6’2 and a solid 210), and the other is a tough-as-nails kid who has seen it all. Neither looked entirely at ease there, but they would be damned if they let something a canuck wasn’t scared of bother them.
Now, our school has a phone policy, and on this day I was calling out a kid who was using his phone despite a warning. I’d sent him to the hall to chat with the Head Teacher and was just returning to class to see a kid chuck an apple at the dead huntsman.
Yeah... It wasn’t dead.
The thing twitched and someone screamed. The apple got a second toss and the big kid booked it. I didn’t even see him move. It was like a dimensional shift.
The spider dropped and the tough kid went to war, using his chair like a lion tamer. Kids were boiling over desks, I was standing, slack-jaw, by the door. People were screaming, the HT was staggering back, almost knocked over by the big-kid from the corner who had warped into the hall…
The tough kid won the war quickly, stomping twice on the corpse to make sure and then sat down like nothing had happened. Everyone else quietly returned to their seat until the bell. The HT blinked at me, to which I responded, “Spider.”
She nodded and left.
After I dismissed them (literally within 5 Minutes) there was a lockdown (genuine, not a drill) over a bomb threat, to which they responded calmly and with disdain…
I am told that kid with warp-speed never runs…