Narrations From a Spectator of Bean

By Kyle Dartt

Meet Bean, a tiny spider of the species Phidippus audax, and all of his incredibly unique and diverse friends. The story is based on the everyday lives of incredible animals that have yet to be recognized for their brilliant and hilarious antics. Narrations From a Spectator of Bean is a not a novel, but a lively adventure in which spiders, reptiles, and other insects are more human than you ever could have imagined. Delve into Bean's world, a world that you won't ever want to leave.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jul 30, 2017
• ISBN: 9781387135219

Book preview

Narrations From a Spectator of Bean

Narrations From a Spectator of Bean

Written by Kyle Dartt

-Dedicated to Bean, my loving and supportive friend group, my family, my counselor, my 6th-8th english teacher, and all of my babies- present, past, and those to come.

Table of Contents:

Introduction              

Chapter One: The Beginning       

Chapter Two: Restart                    

Chapter Three: Sparked                

Chapter Four: Reborn    

Chapter Five: Baby                                                                       

Chapter Six: The Egg Came First      

Chapter Seven: Dullen and Revive                                                      

Chapter Eight: Back to the Beginning                                                                  

Introduction

This book is something that started as another odd writing, probably to be tossed like every other silly story. Words turned into paragraphs, which turned into pages, which, in the end, birthed a beautiful narration about beautiful creatures. It is deeply recommended that readers take these insects as more than bugs that crawl around and creep out humans. These insects and animals can be so immensely profound in the things that they can teach us, and the whole purpose of this novelette is to teach. Learn about arachnids and reptiles, but learn in addition how truly similar we are to these simple things. All I can ask is that you, my dearest reader, enjoy these little bugs as much as I did. Go, delve into my (and my spiders’) worlds!

Chapter One: The Beginning

There are spiders in my room. Five of them are there because I put them there, four of which I choose to speak further on for now. The first is a juvenile (a Bold Jumping Spider- Phidippus audax, as are all of my spiders) whose name is Bean. Bean is my favorite, and Bean will always be my favorite. The next is Ariss, the first of my males to spark an interest in his species. Then there is Seraphim. Seraphim is the only female, and Sera will stay my only female. Seraphim is precious, in her own way. Last, I have a spider who I cannot name yet. He doesn't know me, and is still largely afraid of me. I can't see his personality through his fear, and so I will not name him based off of what I see so far.

To clarify, before any of you continue on your journey to the end of this novel, I can't promise not to waste your time with babble about the antics and personal life of my eight legged companions. I also won't say that there is much point to reading this, unless you are horribly and dreadfully plagued with boredom. In fact, I can't even say that I know why I'm writing any of this down in the first place. What I can say, with much certainty, is that Bean is my absolute favorite.

Smol Bean had little chance of living after being brought into my house. Smol Bean was a juvenile, and juveniles were food. I had given the wrong sling (baby spider) a chance: Visa was the immature spider I had mixed in with adults. Ariss was not prepared to build a web yet, and Visa didn't understand boundaries. Ariss was also hungry, and she was enough to sustain him for a while. Visa died.

Unlike Visa, Bean's curiosity saved his life. Had he not been so profoundly interested in my comings and goings, and hopped onto my hand at the time I opened my leopard gecko's cage, I wouldn't have given the thing a second chance. But I did. Bean was brave to have gotten closer, and that piqued my interest in him. He wasn't afraid of my finger looming over him- no, not afraid, just cautious. Bean was not stupid enough to let go of caution, because for a small spider, it was not wise at all.

Eventually, at a point where Bean and I mutually lost interest, he found his way into the shared 10 gallon aquarium- the real world. I did my best to lead him to a fake plant where the smaller spiders could nest- away from the towering overlords that were the adults- but Bean held himself like one of them, one of the big boys, and so he was. The three corners were claimed by Ariss, Sera, and he-who-has-no-name, and that meant that one corner was left. It wasn't a bad spot, either. Right next to Ariss, the alpha. Brave Bean. Or, under the terribly wrong circumstances, stupid Bean.

I had not taken care of the spiders for a three-day period for lack of interest. They had not built webs except overachiever Ariss, who I suppose was trying to gain my favor. Of course, this is a joke, and spiders don't understand jokes. Or explanations. As a writer, my reputation tells me I should edit this out. But I won't. Anyways, despite being webless, my spiders kept to their general areas. Surprisingly, and to my delight, I saw Bean hopping around and setting up camp in the corner. He was still alive! For now, I calmed myself down, but that in itself was fortunate enough to celebrate.

A day later, on a Sunday, I decided it was best to try to feed my pets. Winter was still trudging across the States, and slapping Louisiana across the face with whipping wind and humid streets. What that means for me, in less ridiculously colorful terms, is that food was in short supply. One earwig was retrieved from under the back porch's doormat. After dropping it in the spiders' comparatively enormous domain, something came to mind. None of them were paying attention to anything but my big scary self perched in the middle of their scenic view, i.e., the hardwood floor and blue walls of my room. I had to bring the food to them.

Naturally, I began with Ariss. The dominant male gets the first rations, right? (Where did I get that idea from? Too many bad, late night, there's-nothing-else-on-TV movies, I suppose.) I put the dazed bug on a white note card, hoping its dark color would give some contrast and catch one of Ariss's sharp eyes. Ariss seemed to care more that the thing was crawling around in his personal space than the fact that it was juicy, viable food. Maybe I just wasn't safe to him yet, I don't quite know. Eventually, the card got over to Bean's small corner and I realized that he was too tiny for this massive earwig. It wasn't him that backed out, it was my choice. It wouldn't be safe to let Bean be reckless after he'd lived so long in the shark tank. In hindsight, I feel as if he knew his boundaries, which is what kept him alive to that point anyways. He wouldn't have acted stupidly- that's mostly a human thing. Anyways, the meal eventually went to the iron jaws of Seraphim, who utilized one quick and decisive lunge to steal her prey from its silver platter. I even jumped back from the fervor in which she sprung. Sera must have have been hungry, or maybe she was just trying to prove that she wasn't frail in the face of some tough guys. Good on you, Seraphim.

To the victor goes the spoils. Sera's little stunt established her skills very quickly, and that made Ariss curious. Audax spiders are notorious for their lust for knowledge and the courage to move closer to investigate. Were Sera of the same sex, Ariss would be warranted to feel threatened. Fortunately, she was not, and Ariss intended to take advantage of that. I peered over the edge of the cage to watch my society of spiders interact, but I realized that their potential intimacy was better left unseen. As the time passed, I began to get worried. What if Ariss wanted to challenge her after all? Or worse, what if he wanted to eliminate competition first, and take out the other male, or Bean? Bean was not worth risking over respecting their privacy. I threw open the lid, partially mangling Ariss's badly placed web, and checked Bean's corner. He stared back at me, with an intent gaze, as did a bewildered Seraphim. Her look, if a spider’s face could ever be expressive, screamed, Dad, you're embarrassing me! And I took that as a cue to leave.

Label me a bad parent, or chalk it up to human error- I left the lid off the enclosure. It was a full day before I realized my flaw, and a fatalistic mentality that they were never to be found kept me to my bed. What use was there to searching for four minuscule spiders with perfect vision if they didn't want to be found? My brilliant plan was to starve them out and catch them when they come out to hunt. Could I have been less proactive?

Don't bash my laziness too much, my sloth and bad habits of lying around in bed let me find Seraphim. I was sitting staring at the walls like lazy writers often do, when my bladder urged me up, finally. Above the bathroom door, I saw a little black speck, and further inspection from the lengths of my bed proved that speck to be... a dot. Needless to say, my vision wasn't 20/20 and didn't come from eight different eyes like theirs did. I gracefully flopped out of bed and ambled over to the toilet. Realizing that I left behind my mystery dot, I finished up and walked out of my bathroom. The assumptions you probably made about the speck's identity were all wrong. It wasn't a spider, just a dirt spot on the wall. But crawling up to the spot, there walked Seraphim.

It took lots of coaxing to get her down from the wall, and by that I really mean scaring her down with a stick to drop a line of silk down- tough love is still love. I expected her to hang from the ceiling gracefully like in every story with a spider, but she was Sera. Her clunky body hit the rug with a thunk that even I felt. My poor baby oddball, Sera. I felt bad laughing, and felt worse for chuckling at her not so seamless entrance to the cage. She could crawl just fine, but the use of her silk to catch her was... lacking. Being clumsy was just a part of being Seraphim, and it was charming in the way she did it.

The next night I found Ariss, and the day after that I found the spider with no current title. Bean was nowhere to be found. It was the weekend again, another Saturday that I sat in bed doing nothing until 2:00 p.m. Once again, on my way to the bathroom, I saw something move. When I did a double take to look at it, there was nothing there. Was I hallucinating, grieving Bean? After I washed my hands, I saw more movement in my peripheral. A fuzzy brown face greeted me from behind the doorway, waving at me with two tiny palps. Bean was cute and friendly as ever, though being gone had reinforced his caution towards me. I had become a predator to him again. The fact that I had to abduct him back to the cage didn't make matters any better. All would be forgiven, I thought, if I could find him some good food.

The bipolar Louisiana weather was holding its position as warmer now, potentially welcoming spring to its doorstep. The humidity never went away, of course, but the insects came back. I returned to the spot where Bean and the others were found, and gathered 3 earwigs and a small spider for Bean. When I got back to the habit, ambition won over logic in Ariss's head. He attacked an earwig from an angle that allowed his leg to be pinched- twice. That was what it took to learn his lesson, apparently, and he learned it well. He refused to take earwigs from that point on, even with their pincers chopped off. My growing boy, Bean, still tiny and immature, took the biggest bug originally reserved for Ariss. Ariss got Bean's tiny gray spider, which barely filled his mouth. He looked stupid in front of his girl, for holding such tiny prey, and for being shown up by a little kid.

I have spent countless hours leaned over the glass, watching the complex actions of those four spiders. Most of the time, the spider who will not yet be named spends his time sporadically hopping around the cage. He's an adult and doesn't have a corner. He is the outcast, the runt. I'm not entirely sure he even has a web, to be frank. The thought crossed my mind to move him to a separate enclosure, but I wanted to keep a just balance. It wouldn't be fair to give him a leg up on the others, everyone had a fair chance right now. Even Bean, who I was going to let fade into the circle of life. I am so glad I gave him a second chance- or more accurately, that he made one for himself.

That last sentiment is sad and dull now. I will say this- Smol Bean is my favorite. That is all.

As a reader, Bean is portrayed like a beautiful character. He is. All of my spiders are beautiful. Out of nothing but observation, I have decided to name my last male spider. His name will be Grimm Reaper, Reaper for short. He stole something, but I'm not entirely sure I can say stolen and have it be correct. As I was writing this narration, Reaper had slain Bean. I walked in to the sight of Bean in Reaper's mouth. It feels as if the title of this whole text is wrong now. But I will not change it. Maybe I'll get the privilege to make you readers feel something. Feeling is a beautiful thing, you know. Bean is dead, and I am so sad and angry. But Reaper is a spider. He saw a greater opportunity in eating Bean than in eating an earwig, and he did. There isn't use in taking this out on Reaper, because I already have one dead spider. Everything dies, at some point, and the outlook for Bean was bleak to begin with. Even still, Bean served a purpose to Reaper, and that means something. There is room in the corner next to Ariss now. The dynamics have changed, and new things are coming. I'll say it again- Bean... is my favorite.

I'm proud of how far a juvenile Audax can come. There really are equal opportunities in the setup I have, and that is all