With apologies to Arnold Lobel
Bird-Eating Tarantula was walking through the forest, looking for birds to eat. Lurking on the damp underside of a rock, reading a book, he found his friend, Giant Centipede.
“Hello, Bird-Eating Tarantula” said Giant Centipede, “What are you doing?”
“I’m trying to find something to eat,” said Bird-Eating Tarantula, “but this forest doesn’t seem to have any food in it.”
Giant Centipede put down his book and scuttled out from under the rock. “What about the guinea fowl chicks that I saw just behind those fallen trees?”
Bird-Eating Tarantula sighed. “Their mother is too big and strong. She pecks at me.”
They walked along for a while until they came to the edge of a reedy marsh. “Look, Bird-Eating Tarantula,” said Giant Centipede, “There are some eggs lying in a nest of mud!”
Bird-Eating Tarantula nearly tripped over his eight long, hairy legs as he ran to look, but then he came back, crestfallen. “Those are the Caiman’s eggs,” he moaned. “Their leathery shells are far too tough for my fangs. And their mother is even bigger and fiercer than the guinea fowl!”
Just then a small green frog hopped out of the reeds, and Giant Centipede killed it with venom. “Would you like to share this frog with me?” he asked Bird-Eating Tarantula politely.
“What, a frog?” said Bird-Eating Tarantula with surprise. “Oh, no, I couldn’t possibly eat that — amphibians don’t agree with me at all!”
“Well then,” said Giant Centipede, after rapidly digesting the frog, “we will find something you will like.”
They walked through the forest, but everywhere they turned, the creatures were either too large, like the capybara, or else too chitinous, like the giant locusts, for Bird-Eating Tarantula. “What about these enormous, blind earthworms?” said Giant Centipede. “They are too soft to put up a fight and they are very tasty, like a nice pudding!”
But Bird-Eating Tarantula only turned away with a shudder. “That’s…sorry, Giant Centipede, but worms are disgusting. I mean, basically they’re just one big long intestine.” So Giant Centipede ate all the worms himself.
Soon they arrived back at the rock, and now Bird-Eating Tarantula saw his friend’s unfinished book. “I’m sorry, Giant Centipede,” said Bird-Eating Tarantula. “You have been trying to help me but nothing in this forest seems to do. I am a bad Tarantula and a bad friend.” He wiped away tears with the spiny, weaponized hairs on his forelegs, which made him feel worse.
Giant Centipede thought for a moment. “Bird-Eating Tarantula, maybe there’s a way that you can help me.”
Bird-Eating Tarantula moaned, “How? You’ve already found many good things to eat!”
“Yes,” said Giant Centipede, “but I am so full of frogs and earthworms and locusts and that baby capybara I ate that I feel sluggish. I need some exercise.”
“What kind of exercise?” asked Bird-Eating Tarantula.
“I was thinking,” said Giant Centipede, “That if I threaten the guinea fowl’s chicks, she will chase me and I will have to run oh so fast to get back under my rock. But she might catch me. Unless…”
“…Unless she has to run back because I am eating all of her babies?”
“Yes, Bird-Eating Tarantula. Because you will be eating all of her babies. And then you will come back to my rock and I will read to you from my book.”
And that is just what they did.
[Ed. Note: Please imagine here that I have drawn a lovely picture, in the manner of Arnold Lobel, of Giant Centipede and Bird-Eating Tarantula reading together.]
