The Legend of Larry

A month ago, Boppy returned from Arizona with an interesting tidbit to share with Charley and Sage. As he'd been packing up the house to leave, he saw a giant Sonora centipede crawling out from under the cowboy table in the sun room.

Thinking it would be of great interest to the grandsons, he emptied out a coffee container, stuck it in front of the six inch feller who promptly strode into the accommodating dark room. Boppy closed it up and drove home with the find. He figured if it survived the ride or not, he could show the boys what it looked like, then dispose of it.

The boys were captivated. Charley took one look and crowed with delight at its many legs and its size. "Why this must be the biggest bug in the world, Boppy!" he exclaimed, peering over the lid at the critter who reared its head upon the sight of sunlight in its otherwise dark home.

Its body was yellow with a brown head and tail. Two pinchers grew on its head and a nasty hooky spine, not unlike a scorpion, appeared on its tail. This critter could hold its own.

"Ohh, that's gwoss, Boppy!" Sage proclaimed, taking his turn to peer into the container. "That just gwoss!" He turned away and proceeded to spin circles in the room.

Charley, though, appeared to be transfixed by the appearance of the centipede. He ran to get Daddy to look up some facts on the centipede on the Internet. Then he found a clear Tootsie Roll container from the storeroom in the boathouse and persuaded Boppy to slide the hapless centipede into it so he could be viewed without having to open the coffee can lid. An hour later, while I was engrossed at the computer in the office, I heard Charley obligingly showing two customers "the world's largest centipede. Don't touch it, though,for its bite can kill you!" The men grinned and nodded their heads, marvelling at the thing and departed. Charley had a new idea.

"Daddy said this is the biggest centipede in the Northern Hemisphere, Mackey." (Charley would make a great school teacher at eight years old, with his pronouncements.) "Its bite will kill a frog or mouse. But it could sure hurt us. No, we can't touch it! He said it is found in only remote areas of the Sonoran Desert." (My cowboy table in the sunroom in Arizona appears to be a very remote area from where I sit at the computer in Northern California.) "And he says, it is very hard to capture."

"Agreed, Charley. I'm sure your Boppy had a hard time persuading the critter to walk into the coffee container."

Charley picked up the container in one arm, holding it behind his back and walked out to the busy Sunday afternoon tourists coming to the Landing to walk the beach or catch a crab. I got up and peered around the door to see what he was up to. He walked up to a group of folks and spoke earnestly for a new minutes. I saw a lady reach into her purse and take out a coin which she offered to Charley. He took the container out from under his arm, pried back the lid and let the lady peer down upon his find. She backed away after a few moments, a smile on her face. Charley nodded his head importantly, placed the lid securely back on the Tootsie Roll jar and pocketed the coin in his pants. Then he walked up to the next group of people and started his pitch.

Charley made $1.50 that day and before the day was over named the critter Larry. Why Larry? Larry is leggy, he said. Yes, he was and extremely lethal it appeared to me.

Over the course of the next week, Charley and Sage collected garden beetles and dead flies and fed Larry, who happily, it appeared, ate them up. They talked Boppy into helping them transfer Larry temporarily to another container so they could decorate the Tootsie Roll jar with a handful of beach sand, some sand crab carcasses, various twigs and a handful of grasses. Larry seemed content in his new domicile and spent a great deal of time absolutely supine. How do I know this? For Larry was now living on my kitchen counter. Mommy had come down and seen Larry and decided that he wasn't going to be inhabiting her home. Mackey agreed to provide a room over Larry's head only until Boppy returned to Arizona where he would be released into his own environment. She kept quizzing Boppy on when that trip would be.

Larry was fed twice a week but his appetite for flies was voracious. Charley was having a hard time swatting enough on the days he spent with Larry, but he finally hit upon a solution. He organized two of the most hyper-active boys in his class to catch flies for Larry during lunch recess. They sealed them up in their Zip-Lock sandwich bags. One lunch day, Charley emptied out forty-two of them. Larry was in hog-heaven. That night, I saw Larry climb the twig after one fly who had survived and was buzzing around the container for dear life, while Larry hooked the lower third of his body around the twig and dangled out into space to connect with the hapless fly. It was too much Wild Kingdom for me. I turned out the kitchen light without watching the outcome.

During the swap meet, Charley and Sage sold cookies and Looks at Larry for a quarter apiece and made thirty eight dollars in two days. Charley was ecstatic. When it appeared on Saturday that business was sagging in the middle of the day, he set Sage digging out beetles in the garden and commandeered a Sharpie from Mackey and wrote on a large poster: "LOOKS AT LARRY 25 cents. FEED LARRY FOR A DIME!" Business improved.

Charley didn't have a chance to tell Larry good-bye before Bopppy departed for the desert. I was sure he'd feel cheated since Boppy had removed his money making scheme. But Larry was loaded in back of the truck, still in his Tootsie Roll container. I snagged a garden snail and threw it in the container as a travelling Happy Meal for the big fella. Next morning, when Boppy unloaded the car, he thought Larry looked fairly lifeless. It would be a shame to remove the critter that far north for three weeks, then bring a lifeless Larry home. But as he took the container out and shook it, Larry sprang to life, his many legs clutching at the air as though voicing his complaint at all the interruptions in his otherwise ordered life.

I had visions of Boppy driving out to the desert wilderness someplace far from civilization and letting Larry go free. But Boppy had many chores on his mind and couldn't take the time. He walked across the street, into a gully that runs down from Apache Leap mountain. At the top of the gully, far enough away from any gullywashers that might come up, Boppy let Larry go. Larry crawled out of the Tootsie Roll container, the same way he'd gone in so obediently three weeks before, spied a hole just ahead of him and snuggled in. I don't know what kind of critter Larry ate to regain his home, but I do know he's back in his rightful environment. Boppy claims there was a big smile on his face as he slithered into his hole.

Charley has found a cache of old sea shells from Mexico that he is now actively selling. He had to give up on Larry as his source of income but he hasn't given up being an entrepreneur.