My first year of practice, I was talking to an owner in an exam room when I saw her eyes go wide and she yelled, "SPIDER!" I looked down and saw a large arachnid crawling across the table towards her poodle. Without missing a beat, I grabbed a large drug compendium and put an end to the assault. The lady looked up, cocked her head, and said, "I guess you don't love all the animals, then." I felt terrible, actually. My grandmother would not have approved. She would capture daddy longlegs in ... Read more »
spiders
Spiders till proven otherwise.
Deep in tender recesses of our cranium lies a small chunk of neural tissue that, should I prove its existence, will explain a lot about human behavior. I believe we all have this structure, though it may lie dormant for many years, perhaps forever. It's the arachnobellum. It's a small, primitive bit of grey matter tucked right in the center of the brainstem, that area that controls our deepest, most primal instincts. It's the part of the brain that blames all maladies, no matter how big ... Read more »
Shelob’s Web
One day about a month into my career, I was in an exam room with a client when a large-ish spider skittered across the exam table towards my hand. "Eeek!" screamed the client. "Eek!" screamed the vet. I grabbed the nearest book (I believe it was Miller's Anatomy, a nice, dense tome) and dropped it on the table with a thud. Silence. Then, from the client: "Guess you don't love all the animals, huh?" I felt kind of bad about that one, truth be told. I haven't done it since. I've ... Read more »