Sponge Crab and Decorator Crab

I was telling Pliny the Elder about my visit to the new Biodiversity Gallery in the SA Museum.

It was good, I said.

What did you learn? he asked.

That put me on the spot.

Umm, I learned ......

I tried to remember what I had learned. I had seen a great deal. A number of stuffed birds and snakes that I seemed to have seen before in earlier galleries. Drawers full of spiders and beetles and butterflies on pins. Numerous excited children and their parents. But what had I learned?

Suddenly I remembered the brightly coloured models of the Sponge Crab and the Decorator Crab.

There is a crab called the Sponge Crab, I said knowledgeably. It carries a sponge about on its back as a shelter. The sponge grows with the crab. If the sponge gets stolen, the crab will try very hard to get it back. If it can't, it will find itself another sponge.

Fascinating, said Pliny the Elder. What else?

There is another crab, called the Decorator Crab, that is equally strange, I told him. This crab uses snippers to snip off bits of seaweed that it finds, and sticks them to its back with glue that it secretes from a gland. It does this as a means of camouflage.

Snippers? said Pliny sharply. Where does it get the snippers?

Oops! I said. I can't remember that.

Fortiter araneulas frango

Pliny says No No No to the grapes motto. He thinks I should try 'I am bold when it comes to killing small spiders'.

He says he knows it to be true. He has seen me do it with his own eyes. He says that if it would not spoil the motto, which it would, I ought to make it medium sized spiders.

I ask him why. He says that he has seen me let small spiders live, when they are in the bath or on a page of a book I'm reading. I was unaware that he observed me so closely. He is right though. Small spiders are money spiders and to kill them is bad luck.

I want him to help me with the Latin. He says he won't but he will give me some helpful advice. Don't translate it literally, try for brevity and succinctness.

Let's try the literal. Sum audax dum venit frangere parvas araneas. Yes that does sound rather clunky.

How about 'Boldly I crush small spiders'. Fortiter frango araneas parvas.

That's still too long, says Pliny. You can make it shorter. Use the diminutive.

O clever!

Fortiter frango araneulas! Boldly I crush wee spids.

But Pliny's right. I don't. Just mid-size ones. There's a fundamental problem with this motto.

Hortulana negans

Pliny, I said, later on.

What?

I don't like that motto. It's too ambiguous.

Nihil summatim?

Yes, it could be taken to mean that I can be summed up by a great big nothing.

It doesn't say anything about the size of it.

I know, but you know what I mean. I want something a bit more personal.

How about The negative gardener? Hortulana negans. That's personal.

It's too negative. Something about me. I love the sea. I am made entirely of grapes. I am bold when it comes to killing small spiders. What do you think?

I think I'll leave it up to you.

Spiders Flies Split Bugs and Mirrors

This is the weather for spiders and bugs and flies to come inside. This is the weather for putting off housework.

Therefore the carpet is littered with dead species, some in two parts.

The only way to be sure they are dead is to split them. This can be done by means of the human foot. It is advisable however for the foot to be clad in hard footwear.

After several passes of the footwear over the bug, it will split in two parts, or three. You can leave them in situ. Over time they will shrink into more acceptable deadbug pieces which look like cracked pepper. No one objects to cracked pepper on the carpet, and the pieces can stay there until the hot spell is over.

Of course you can't leave split flies hanging about. Little maggots might come out.

Spiders present another problem. But come to think of it I haven't seen one inside for ages. Except the daddy longlegs in the bathroom several weeks ago. I soon disposed of him and all the legs I could find.

Spiders are tricky. They hide. There is one living behind the outside mirror on the passenger side of our car. I know because there's a web over the mirror. It jiggles in the wind as we drive. It looks very dense because of the mirror. I wonder if this confuses the spider, especially as it's one of those mirrors that makes objects appear further away than they are.

Yes, this must confuse the spider. Coming back from a wander, it sees a double web, a double victim, and a tiny spider self. Ha!