A colleague found this lovely grass spider scampering about the hallways, and she brought it to me (this is a routine event every Fall). I happily took it and brought it home, in my left hand.
Then as I was leaving the science building, I spotted a lovely bold jumper on the glass door. Of course I caught it in my right hand.
I’m hurrying home with spiders in each hand, and when I got home, there was a zebra jumper waiting on the door. I thought about pulling a Darwin and popping one of them into my mouth so I could catch the third, but I didn’t want to traumatize any of the spiders, so the zebra jumper was let off, and is having a lovely time in the garden, where all of them eventually ended up.
The time traveler in 12 Monkeys popped a large spider in his mouth for safekeeping on his way back to the lab, and I’ve had nightmares ever since watching it.
You’re only supposed to catch bombardier beetles in your mouth.
At this point you may as well carry pokeballs on you, and force the spiders to fight in illegal Pokemon tournaments.
As a historian of science, I’m amused to find that “pulling a Darwin” is well enough known among invertebrate biologists (or bug collectors) to be a trope! I once brought down the house with that anecdote during a comic debate at Trinity College, Cambridge (even though Darwin spent his Cambridge years at Christ’s College, not Trinity). To be fair, the house was pretty well liquored up by that point.
We’re solidly into spring here, and it’s really exciting to see more spiders out and about