There is a very large spider that’s been staying in my tent with me since a few days ago. He/she seems to be a baby tarantula, by the looks of his legs and the shape of his body. I initially found him near the zipper door of my tent and tried to encourage him to leave by making a ramp of paper for him, but he didn’t budge. So now 2 nightys in a row, I have slept with this thing in my tent with me, in full surrender to him crawling up my nose or whatever.

That’s been a theme recently – wildlide and other animals and equanimity therof- I was in the chicken coup this morning tending the chickens and they can sense your demeanor and will get agitated if you get annoyed or frustrated. So my way of being is to just say hello friends, wish them metta, and treat them like a beautiful phenomenon of nature. I re-integrated one of the chickens back into the herd today after isolating him due to s leg sprain. Chickens are kind of group-centered animals. If one of the herd is injured it often attracts predators, so the other chickens will sometimes kill the injured one and it’s not pretty. But they are collectively minded, and if one hurt chicken attracts a wolf it could wipe out the entire herd. So they are unforgiving and it’s not really personal.

Luckily today they accepted the previously ostracized chicken back into the herd, and now we have 8 happy chickens. Lots of eggs were produced today, very fruitful day actually.

This theme has been coming up lately, many times in the last week I’ve been meditating outside, in the sun, in the early morning windy cold, with flies and mosquitos biting me, ants crawling on me while I’m sitting, etc. (No, I haven’t maintained a perfect Buddha smile through all this- but I’m close! 🙂 Getting into nature and simply meditating leads to lots of engagement with many types of critters. Just now I was standing, and something was crawling all over my foot, up my leg, then it seemingly disappeared and then reappeared on my arm, crawled up to my neck and then started back again, and by the time the crawling sensation finaly reached my foot and disappeared again, I was overcome with curiosity, and it was a big spider.

The ants tend to have a different feel to them and decide to bite pretty soon after crawling onto you. So far, I have only sustained 1 insect bite and that was a red fire ant because their hill was right underneath the outdoor sink.