Does Avatar teach us to see the beauty around us

[Raiden]

Lol.

I used to have a few dozen spiders, about a dozen tarantulas, a few trapdoor spiders (tarantulas and trapdoor spiders are technically different than "true" spiders), scorpions, centipedes, millipedes, colonies of tropical cockroaches, beetles, snails, and a bunch of reptiles, amphibians and tropical fish that I kept around as "pets" and casual study subjects, all in various terrariums and aquariums. If I heard something moving around or I had something crawling on my shoulder I turned on the lightsfirst.

There was one time where I felt something crawling on my back, and I brushed it off and went back to sleep, only to be woken up again by whatever it was. I assumed it was a cricket (crickets are a staple food in captivity for many of the aforementioned critters), but then I remembered that I hadn't bought crickets in months.

I turned the light on and it was a massive gnaphosid spider that I had seen crawling around in the bathroom before. It was sitting quite still on my shoulder, almost like a parrot from old pirate stories.

I think most people would have shrieked and the spider would have died, but I apologized to it (my exact words were "Oh ****, sorry") and set it down on the floor.

I actually liked having spiders around, because they caught escaped feeder insects (such as crickets), and kept them from getting into the pantry and causing trouble. There was one time that I was vacuuming out under my desk and I found the dried up carcasses of several mealworms, superworms, and crickets in the web of a very fat Steatoda grossa (false widow) spider.

But anyway, good for you for being nice to invertebrates.