6

Tanya Tarantula

On the fourth day of school, nobody had ever heard of Tanya Tarantula. By the fifth day of school, not only did everyone know her, she was the most popular girl at school. Despite the fact that she was a giant tarantula.

When you think of a giant tarantula, you probably think of one the size of a baseball. Or, if you’re really imaginative, perhaps the size of a basketball. In either case, you’re not even close.

On the fifth day of school, King Khufu asked the class, “Who can name the longest ruling female pharaoh of ancient Egypt?”

At that moment, a tarantula the size of a shopping cart fell through the ceiling right on top of Bryce McCallister.

Everyone in class screamed, thinking death upon swift wings was about to come to Bryce. But Tanya was more afraid of the students than they were of her. She jumped onto the floor and scurried all over the room, trying to find a place to hide.

The students stood on their desks in fright, causing Tanya to display her fangs and raise her legs in defense.

Charles Nukid was so scared, all of his hairs stood up on end. He had to spend the rest of the day putting them back into place.

The children continued screaming until King Khufu ordered, “Silence!” Everyone immediately hushed up. Khufu pulled out a golden sword from his sarcophagus and slowly approached the quivering Tanya.

Khufu was about to strike, so Tanya said the only thing she could think to say. She said, “Hatshepsut.”

“What did you say?” asked Khufu.

“Hatshepsut.”

“God bless you,” said Cindy Chan.

“No,” King Khufu interjected, “Hatshepsut is the answer to my question—the longest ruling female pharaoh of ancient Egypt. How remarkable.”

King Khufu continued to pepper Tanya with questions, and she got every one of them right.

Maybe you’re wondering how a giant tarantula could possibly know those answers. We will have to delve deeper into the life of this very special arachnid to discover the answers.

To begin with, it is important to note that Tanya Tarantula never met her parents. The reason she never met her parents was because they were also giant tarantulas. Giant tarantulas are notoriously awful parents. In fact, as soon as their tarantula children are born, they consider their parenting job done and they abandon them to survive on their own.

If your parents aren’t giant tarantulas, you should consider yourself very lucky.

Until the moment Tanya was born, she had amazing parents. Her mom had laid a batch of five hundred eggs inside a very tight crevice on the side of a mountain on the outskirts of Monster Forest. Within the crevice, the eggs were protected from the elements. The only thing they were not safe from were the hundreds of monsters who could smell the eggs and would do anything to eat them.

For three long months, Tanya’s parents, who were each about the size of the average camping tent, bravely fought off every monster who came to eat their eggs. The egg sacs were clear, so Tanya and her 499 brothers and sisters watched with pride as their parents took down monsters twice their size.

Tanya and her siblings were sure that once they hatched, they would have the best parents in the world.

On a summer morning the baby tarantulas emerged from their egg sacs. Their parents were overjoyed seeing every last one hatch unharmed. None had been eaten by a serpentiger or a jabberfox.

Each baby giant tarantula was about the size of a starfish, which is about the size of a normal full-grown tarantula. They crawled out from the crevice and smelled the fresh air and felt the soft wind. The sensitive tarantula hairs that covered their brown-and-black bodies were like millions of specialized eyes, ears, and noses, telling them every detail about their surroundings.

Sadly, the one thing they did not sense was their parents. As is the natural instinct of all tarantulas, the parents abandoned their children as soon as they were born. I can’t say I blame them. If I suddenly had five hundred children crying for attention, I’d probably run for the hills too. Hey, don’t judge. I’m only eleven!

When they couldn’t find their parents, confusion quickly turned to fear. No longer did they have their mighty protectors.

Unfortunately, their presence on the rock face was sensed by a different kind of creature—the tarantula hawk. You probably think that a tarantula hawk is a very nasty kind of bird that feeds on tarantulas. Well, that’s only half right. The tarantula hawk is actually a two-inch wasp that stings a tarantula into paralysis, then lays its eggs inside the stiff tarantula carcass for its larvae to grow inside and feast upon. The fact that it’s called a tarantula hawk instead of a tarantula wasp is another example of our ridiculous language often-times causing needless confusion.

The swarm of tarantula hawks descended upon the five hundred baby giant tarantulas. Tanya’s brothers and sisters laughed because they were three times the size of the tarantula hawks and were sure those bugs stood no chance against them.

Tanya, however, was quite a bit smarter than her brothers and sisters. She realized that if such small creatures were so willing to attack them, then they must have a secret weapon. She pleaded for her brothers and sisters to take cover on the ground underneath a fallen branch. Only nine of her brothers and sisters joined her.

The rest remained to battle the tarantula hawks. It did not go well. The tarantulas raised their front legs and displayed their fangs (also known as chelicerae), but the tarantula hawks flew down with dizzying speed and delivered swift stings on the tarantulas’ vulnerable abdomens. All of Tanya’s siblings that had chosen to stay were stung, paralyzed, and dragged off by the merciless tarantula hawks to become incubators and first meals for the tarantula hawk larvae.

Now, in the last book I mentioned that Scary School is without a doubt the most wholesome book series to be published in the last twenty years because of the important life lessons learned in the act of losing one’s life. This remains true: The baby tarantulas learned several important life lessons that day.

They learned that when you’re a wild animal, following your instincts instead of your emotions is usually the best move. They also learned never to judge another creature by its size. Sometimes the smallest can be the most dangerous.

Tragically, those tarantulas would never get to apply those life lessons because they were all dead, but the lessons were learned nonetheless.

Tanya and her nine remaining siblings made their way across the leafy ground into the dark wilderness of Monster Forest. They crawled across the forest floor until they reached a rotting tree stump. There, they enjoyed their first meal of creamy, sour termites.

Tanya looked at each of her siblings, and suddenly, an instinct kicked in to lead a life of complete solitude. As her siblings looked at her, she knew they were feeling the same thing.

The baby giant tarantulas nodded in acknowledgment that it had been fun enjoying one meal together as a family. In the next instant, each turned around and scampered off in a different direction. They would never see one another again.

For many weeks Tanya survived by her wits in Monster Forest. During the day, she hid inside logs and leaf piles. At night she would go out hunting for tasty crickets, beetles, and caterpillars. After one month she had doubled in size and was as big as a football.

One summer day she was sleeping in a leaf pile when she felt a disturbance in the air.

She heard a monster call out, “Here I go. Watch this!”

The large monster made a running jump into the leaf pile. Tanya dashed out in the nick of time. The monster saw her.

“Oofa,” said Larry the gargoyle. “I’ve always wanted a pet tarantula.”

The gargoyle picked up Tanya and began gently petting her. Tanya wanted to bite the gargoyle, but she worried that her venom might not affect such a large creature. It would probably just get mad and squash her.

The monsters were gargoyles on summer vacation from guarding Petrified Pavilion at Scary School.

Harry the gargoyle looked at Tanya, remarking, “Oooh, it is cute. Let’s keep it.”

They put Tanya in a basket and gave her the name Tanya. Tanya was not happy about being kept as the gargoyles’ pet, but she remembered what had happened to 490 of her brothers and sisters. Things could be worse.

When the school year began, the gargoyles returned to Scary School. They kept Tanya with them atop Petrified Pavilion so that they always had something to play with. The gargoyles were nice enough, but Tanya still wanted to be alone.

By winter, Tanya had doubled in size and was as big as a large dog. Fortune struck when the gargoyles saw a group of kids trying to sneak into Petrified Pavilion and took off after them. Tanya used the opportunity to make her escape.

She carefully crawled down the enormous, screaming face of Petrified Pavilion to the grassy area below. She scuttled as fast as she could toward the only place that looked inviting—the Scary School main building.

She made her way through a bulkhead and found herself in the Scary School basement. The damp darkness made her feel right at home.

Tanya explored her surroundings, finding a ventilation shaft in the wall. She crawled into the shaft and discovered that it snaked through every room in the school. Her favorite pastime became traveling from class to class and listening in on the lessons. She found that she loved learning. She taught herself how to write with her fangs and even took the tests right along with the students.

After a few years, Tanya was a proud straight-A student. She would have been valedictorian of Scary School had anybody known that she existed.

Most impressively, Tanya had taught herself to speak English. At night in the basement, she would practice speaking when not feasting on mice and rats. Her voice was very raspy and unladylike. Sometimes the school janitor, Marvin, would hear her, but he just assumed it was a ghost and thought nothing of it.

By the fifth day of school this year, Tanya had grown so big and heavy, she broke through the ceiling vent and came crashing down on top of Bryce McCallister.

After the incident, she found herself in front of Principal Headcrusher being grilled with more questions. After Tanya told her story, Principal Headcrusher asked, “Tanya, how would you like to be a full-time student here at Scary School? I suppose you can attend for free since you’ve saved me a fortune in vermin-exterminator fees over the years. As long as you keep up the good work in that department, I see no reason why you can’t enroll as a student and we’ll call it even.”

Tanya wiggled her chelicerae (also known as fangs) up and down, which in tarantula-speak is equivalent to nodding.

That afternoon, Tanya became an official member of King Khufu’s class. Since she couldn’t fit into any of the chairs, they set up a lovely terrarium for her at the back of the room. When she knew an answer, she would raise one of her hairy tarantula arms. When she really wanted to answer a question, she raised six of her hairy arms.

After a few classes, the students stopped looking behind them every few minutes to check if she was about to pounce. She became just another member of the class.

After her first week, she found that her usual instinct of solitude was fading away. To her surprise, she was enjoying being part of a community. All the kids in class became friends with her and had a lot of fun patting her on her hairy head and riding on her back during recess. If this was what having a family felt like, she wanted more of it.

When she’d go back down to her basement at night, she’d think about all her friends who were spending time with their mothers and fathers. She wondered if her parents were out there somewhere and if they still loved her.

 

When Tanya was invited to join her classmates on the trip to Monster Forest to meet the Monster King, she was very excited. She wasn’t very homesick, but just maybe she’d see her parents there and they would give her a big, hairy eight-armed hug.