Tuesday, February 05, 2008

Gasp!

I first heard about NPR's Wait, Wait. . .Don't Tell Me from Julie. She downloads it to her Ipod and listens to it while she walks the dog. She says that sometimes she laughs out loud and hopes other people walking along don't think she's nuts.

I thought about that as I was listening to The August 11, 2007 broadcast. The guest was Dr. Kevin Fitzgerald, of Animal Planet's "Emergency Vets: Interns" and he reported the following bit of nonsense. I have seldom laughed so hard in my life. It was so unexpected and told in such a droll voice. Follow the link and listen for yourself. Picture Julie walking Genevieve and the reactions other pedestrians might have to her reaction.

Dr. Fitzgerald reported that a man brought him a tarantula, and although he knows that a good vet isn't afraid of a patient, big spiders creep him out since they move funny, and it is worse when they have hair. He avoided the temptation to demand a phone book and squash the thing, but he was uncomfortable with it. When he asked what was wrong with the spider, he was told that he wasn't acting like himself -- he hadn't eaten for a couple of weeks and one of his legs had fallen off. Fitzgerald said that in his experience, when a spider's legs started to fall off, it was pretty sick. He referred the man to the Museum of Natural History to see Dr. Lick.

Before long, he got a call from Dr. Lick, "Did you send me this man with the big-assed spider? And did you tell him that in your experience when their legs start to fall off they are pretty sick? Well, if you had taken the time to examine him, you would have seen that he was, in fact, dead."

Image courtesy of villagewiki.pbwike.com

6 comments:

J said...

This show never fails to crack me up. Dead indeed.

Autumn's Mom said...

holy moly. I loathe and despise spiders and just reading about a tarantula makes me get the creeps.

That's a pretty funny story.

Rain Trueax said...

I have them in Tucson-- outside generally. I bought a little net with a long handle to be able to remove any from the house that happen to get inside. I like them outside, have saved one from the wasp that lays eggs on the tarnatula's back for the babies to eat the wasp when they hatch. One time I was moving a fairly good sized sculpture that is by a small pool to clean and out came an angry tarantula. I apologized profusely and put the sculpture back over it, renaming it in the process Spider Woman, who is a Navajo deity and actually the sculpture did resemble

Anonymous said...

Well I must admit, "dead" is "pretty sick" indeed.

Mary Lou said...

LOLOLOLOL I LOVE that show!!! I listen every chance I get.

Anonymous said...

Maybe he thought it was just resting, and not an ex-spider that had ceased to be.