What is this in this picture that I took randomly in my backyard? In the very middle you can barely see a possible wolf spider (female) with an egg sac. So why does someone who actively traps and kills spiders take a picture of one all of the sudden? Well there is a story. One day I was spraying herbicide in the backyard to kill all the clovers so that our lawn can look nice and shiny (though now there is more brown than green because the pesticide also kills normal grass too), and I saw something fairly large scurry across a brown patch. I inspected closer and lo and behold, it was a female wolf spider carrying in its mouth a large white sac containing its future brood. I instinctively took my hose and sprayed the spider as much as I could, but no matter how much I sprayed, the spider never shrivel up and die, nor did it drop its load and speed away into safety. Instead, it dropped the sac and hovered over it protectively, nuzzling the sac among its eight spidery legs (as seen in the above hi-depth picture). I even used the hose to forcefully separate the spider from the pouch, but no matter how much I chased it away, she always eventually went back to the egg sac. What I witnessed that day was probably the strongest motherly instinct among any animals I've encountered, live or even on the web. The mother never gave up on her children, no matter how hard big bad Daniel tried to kill or separate them. Luckily herbicide does not work like pesticide, and after maybe 5-10 minutes of sick torture, I decided to let the spider go, so that several hundred more wolf spiders may plague my backyard in the future.
So what I learned that day was that in nature, there is a powerful instinct of protection for children, synonymous to God's love for His children. You see videos of mother sheep chasing after wolves, father gorillas defend their band from predator jaguars. Even at Swoop Park you can find mommy and daddy geese march their goslings in a line, protecting them from the front and back until they reach their destination. Only humans are cruel enough to forsake their young, for we are the only species on earth to have sinned and revoke God's original design for us.
