Staehilomyces
Arachnoprince
- Joined
- Mar 2, 2016
- Messages
- 1,514
I daresay, some of you may have noticed that I have been completely absent from this forum for the last 11 days. This was because I, and 18 other students from my grade, embarked on a trip up to Cape York on an immersion tour to do community work for the local indigenous people. Cape York consists largely of Eucalyptus forest, with pockets of tropical rainforest, and the areas we visited were largely untouched save a few farms and dirt roads. Anyway, onto the centipede part. I had already been known by my whole grade for quite a while as "centipede man" or "the centipede wrangler" due to how I handle centipedes, and occasionally let my friends do so too (as you probably know, all my centipedes, with the exception of my young female E. rubripes, are fully acclimated to being handled and extremely docile). Prior to the trip, I was well aware that I may find the stunning tiger variant of E. rubripes, and on the third day, my wish came true.
After a hard day building a fence for a small dwelling, my classmates and I were invited to do a bit of Aboriginal art. The box of painting equipment was left in a shed, and it had rained the night before. I was the first to reach for a paintbrush, and found the box filled with an all manner of inverts, including a small huntsman, and several strange crickets. I decided to try and get the bugs out and release them, so I started with the huntsman. However, I was in for a shock, as while trying to coax the spider onto my hand, a rather large (~15cm) tiger E. rubripes fell off a nearby paintbrush. Even though I had seen pictures of the tiger rubripes before, nothing prepared me for the centipede's stunning patterning; yellow-orange, with bold dark brown bands across its body. Anyway, onto the funny, though at the time rather upsetting part. My friends around me made a little more racket than I would have liked when I attempted to handle it, and drew the attention of one of the teachers. She took one look, and screamed for me to throw it into a nearby campfire. My friends protested, telling her truthfully that I love centipedes with a very special passion, and have several as pets. The teacher responded "I don't care. I want it dead, and I won't leave until it is." That was enough for me. I asked her why she wanted an innocent creature dead, and that I am an experienced centipede handler. She completely ignored my first question, but her response to the second statement amused me. "I have been teaching my year 6 class about insects for several weeks every year for five years. I think it's safe to bet that I know what I am saying. Are we going to have any more disagreements?" I responded "well...centipedes aren't insects. They have 42 legs, as opposed to six." She responded something along the lines of "just listen to me", but I didn't stop there. She still thought that she knew more than I did, so I bombarded her with scientific terminology, such as the morphology of E. rubripes, the venom composition, and my centipede socialization techniques. She opened her mouth to respond, but by then the commotion had attracted another teacher, who had known me for several years, and he let me release the centipede a good distance away. After handling it for several minutes, I let it go under a log. Upon returning, the er...bitch (and I don't swear often) asked me "what was so fulfilling to you about letting a poisonous (yeah...I know, venomous) bug live? I wanted it dead because it would have made the children safer." I responded "What is so fulfilling about burning a living creature alive in front of an entire class? I released it a safe distance away, and as such, the children are safe, and an animal gets to live another day". She then gave me a detention, which I have to attend on the first day after the holidays
At least I know I got to her.
Throughout the rest of the trip, I found four more E. rubripes, and though that teacher never picked on me in regards to centipedes again, she did try her best to embarass me as best as she could for the entire tour. Amusingly, everything she did to make my trip more miserable backfired instantly. She tried to say similar stuff to me nearly every day, always making sure everyone else was listening to embarass me. However, every time, I corrected her sincerely and politely, and she came off looking like a dumbass. She also said I was a danger to myself, and made a rule that I was not allowed to go anywhere without two other students guarding me to make sure I didn't pick up any bugs. That backfired again, as the two students who accompanied me instead functioned as lookouts on my behalf.
So there's my story. And the best part was that my friends now have a newfound respect for centipedes. They are now known as the bug that caused a teacher who would otherwise spoil a trip to become exposed as a fool with not a child's understanding of what she was talking about.
After a hard day building a fence for a small dwelling, my classmates and I were invited to do a bit of Aboriginal art. The box of painting equipment was left in a shed, and it had rained the night before. I was the first to reach for a paintbrush, and found the box filled with an all manner of inverts, including a small huntsman, and several strange crickets. I decided to try and get the bugs out and release them, so I started with the huntsman. However, I was in for a shock, as while trying to coax the spider onto my hand, a rather large (~15cm) tiger E. rubripes fell off a nearby paintbrush. Even though I had seen pictures of the tiger rubripes before, nothing prepared me for the centipede's stunning patterning; yellow-orange, with bold dark brown bands across its body. Anyway, onto the funny, though at the time rather upsetting part. My friends around me made a little more racket than I would have liked when I attempted to handle it, and drew the attention of one of the teachers. She took one look, and screamed for me to throw it into a nearby campfire. My friends protested, telling her truthfully that I love centipedes with a very special passion, and have several as pets. The teacher responded "I don't care. I want it dead, and I won't leave until it is." That was enough for me. I asked her why she wanted an innocent creature dead, and that I am an experienced centipede handler. She completely ignored my first question, but her response to the second statement amused me. "I have been teaching my year 6 class about insects for several weeks every year for five years. I think it's safe to bet that I know what I am saying. Are we going to have any more disagreements?" I responded "well...centipedes aren't insects. They have 42 legs, as opposed to six." She responded something along the lines of "just listen to me", but I didn't stop there. She still thought that she knew more than I did, so I bombarded her with scientific terminology, such as the morphology of E. rubripes, the venom composition, and my centipede socialization techniques. She opened her mouth to respond, but by then the commotion had attracted another teacher, who had known me for several years, and he let me release the centipede a good distance away. After handling it for several minutes, I let it go under a log. Upon returning, the er...bitch (and I don't swear often) asked me "what was so fulfilling to you about letting a poisonous (yeah...I know, venomous) bug live? I wanted it dead because it would have made the children safer." I responded "What is so fulfilling about burning a living creature alive in front of an entire class? I released it a safe distance away, and as such, the children are safe, and an animal gets to live another day". She then gave me a detention, which I have to attend on the first day after the holidays
At least I know I got to her.Throughout the rest of the trip, I found four more E. rubripes, and though that teacher never picked on me in regards to centipedes again, she did try her best to embarass me as best as she could for the entire tour. Amusingly, everything she did to make my trip more miserable backfired instantly. She tried to say similar stuff to me nearly every day, always making sure everyone else was listening to embarass me. However, every time, I corrected her sincerely and politely, and she came off looking like a dumbass. She also said I was a danger to myself, and made a rule that I was not allowed to go anywhere without two other students guarding me to make sure I didn't pick up any bugs. That backfired again, as the two students who accompanied me instead functioned as lookouts on my behalf.
So there's my story. And the best part was that my friends now have a newfound respect for centipedes. They are now known as the bug that caused a teacher who would otherwise spoil a trip to become exposed as a fool with not a child's understanding of what she was talking about.
