Country life
Why Boris had to go
Leanda de Lisle
Iam still looking for someone to animal- sit while we are away on holiday. My in- laws have declined to have our pets this time, arguing that the black Labrador is too smelly, the brown Labrador too incon- tinent, the gold fish too neurotic and the rabbit too bad tempered for them to toler- ate. As for the guinea pig, I suspect my Peruvian mother-in-law would be tempted to spatchcock him and serve him with chilli sauce. An attitude I can well under- stand.
Animals are almost as much work as children. Even the simplest creature can upset your life. I have declined to have a pet of my own since a former boyfriend captured a tarantula, smuggled it back • from the tropics and presented it to me on my first day at university. I was touched (in more ways than one) and accepted his hairy love token. I transferred it to a shoe- box and put it in my bedroom cupboard. Then I named it Boris and, although Boris looked like an eight-legged gremlin, I determined to do my best for him.
My first concern was the cold. So I put Boris's box on a hot-water bottle every night and asked the scout to switch on my electric fire as soon as she came to work. (Being a student, I was incapable of waking up before 11 a.m., by which time Boris's bottle might have frozen.) Next, I turned to the question of what to feed him. I adver- tised for information without success, so I fell back on common sense and reasoned that a wild animal would probably prefer live food. Fortunately, the gardener proved as obliging as my scout. Every day he gave me a bag of worms, slugs and bugs which I dropped into the shoe-box.
Boris ignored these offerings. In desper- ation I tried tangling a worm from a home- made fishing rod and this, thankfully, proved more successful. Boris jumped at the worm and his whole head seemed to open up. Those jaws ... it really was quite frightening. But a few days later something even more disturbing happened. Boris dis- appeared. I looked in his box one morning and he simply wasn't there. I looked gin- gerly under my bed and at the items of clothing lying on the floor. He wasn't there either. I dreaded to think how the other women in my hall of residence would react when I told them that there was a flesh-eat- ing spider the size of my fist loose in the building.
I prayed to Saint Anthony (who was patron saint of lost things until the Pope demoted him) and, miraculously, just when I was about to give up hope, I found Boris. He had jumped up and glued himself to the lid of the shoe-box, where he hung like a nasty surprise in a horror movie. That was when I decided to get rid of Boris. My friends suggested that I put on a pair of Wellingtons and stamp on him, but you don't do that to pets, however repellent. So I took Boris to London Zoo instead. The man in the insect house was very sweet. He told me Boris was female and I would have had more luck feeding her if I had fright- ened her with pieces of fillet steak. On the whole, I was rather pleased to leave that to him.
Boris — or Borisisna as she now was lived happily at London Zoo for many years, until, as the insect keeper sorrowful- ly told me, she 'had a bad moult and had to be put to sleep'. Apparently, tarantulas shed their skins like snakes and hers got stuck. In case you are wondering, they didn't use Wellingtons to put her out of her misery. She was humanely suffocated with paraffin.
In the end I believe I did what was best for Boris. But sadly I don't suppose I would be able to persuade London Zoo to look after my husband's dogs and children's pets even for a fortnight. So I'll just have to blackmail the couple in the garden cottage again instead.
No, wait. They taste better if you let them marinate longer.'
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