My Kind of Spider

That would be the inanimate kind! Joely brought this guy home from the library last week:




You see, Joely had gone to a special library reading of Charlotte's Web. As part of the craft activity which they always do, they stuck with the "spider theme", and used the opportunity to teach the kids about potential dangers (recall after all, that here in Oz some spiders can be dangerous). The guy above is a model of a redback (see the big red glob on his back?!). All the kids made a redback to take home to teach them that if they see a spider with red on it, Don't Touch!

It seems to work too. The other day, Joely was outside mucking about, and she came in saying, "Daddy, there's a spider on a leaf out there and it has red on it! And I didn't touch it!". I motored outside, because I've yet to see one, and of course you all recall my deal with spiders.

Turns out our redback was a piece of fuzz on the leaf. False alarm. However, I'm confident Joely won't go near the real deal - or deadly fuzz.