My wife and I had just gotten into the car when I noticed a small jumping spider next to the dashboard.

Wait, "Hand me a container!?" How did this happen? How did my conversion from an automatic arachni-crusher to an arachnophile take place? It wasn't quick, but having a scientist wife in a permanently arrested childhood helps. Especially if that childhood consists of a lot of running around in the woods turning over rocks.



It started innocently enough with us, Sue taking pictures of ladybugs, butterflies, and the occasional dragonfly or damselfly while I photographed landscapes and larger, more commonly photographed animals. She was well within my parameters of what a "bug loving girl" was supposed to be like. Bugs are cute as long as they are brightly colored, iridescent, or especially graceful in flight. As my wife is an environmental toxicologist, I was aware that she had kept some less attractive insects such as mayflies, caddisflies, and stoneflies in her lab, but I thought she used them as indicator species to gauge the health of an ecosystem. What I didn’t know until later is that she considered them particularly beautiful. Slowly I began to realize that this "twern't no normal, pretty-bug-lovin chick.”