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FIVE-HUNDRED POUND SPIDERS


Every animal I meet teaches me lessons.  The reason is simple.  When God designed each critter, He created a special niche in the ecological system specifically made for that particular genus and species.  Each animal, large or small, fits into God's world like a glove fits on a hand.  When I study that animal, I see the wisdom and economy built into the animal's design.

Take spiders for example.  Have you ever seen a five-hundred pound spider?  Can you imagine the size of a web required to support a humongous arachnid?  I spent time with wild orangutans in the jungles of Borneo, and after seeing apes that weigh hundreds of pounds, I can understand why spiders weigh grams rather than a quarter ton.

Spiders have to spin their own webs, and it would be metabolically impossible for a five-hundred pound spider to spin a web that could support his weight.   If you are going to have webs, you need featherweight spiders who have just the right combination of size and weight to make their web based existence viable.

What's true of spiders is also true for every other creature in the animal kingdom.  They are all designed for a particular niche in God's world.  It's fascinating to get up close and personal with different animals and discover how they fit in the grand scheme of things.

Humans also need to discover how they fit in the grand scheme of things.  We are the major species that has trouble fitting in.  We seem to be a square peg in a round world.

Humans have a problem with over-population.  No other species suffers from the same affliction.  When you go to wild places you won't find too many cheetahs, owls, or crocodiles.  If the balance of animal species goes out of whack, it's usually due to human intervention.  Good examples of this are the introduction of rabbits and cane toads into Australia; both species went wild when they landed on the shores of Oz.  The genius club thought it would be a good idea to alter the balance of nature, and they got it wrong once again.

Over-consumption is another example. The compulsion to put food into our mouth is out of control.  We don't eat to survive.  We eat to feel good, to allay our anxieties, and to pass time.  Eating is almost like smoking; it's something we do when there's nothing else to do.  How many fat lions, tigers, and monkeys have you seen?  Not many, I'll bet, because they eat what they need to survive and nothing more.  In my work as a retina surgeon, I treated thousands of adult onset diabetics who were overweight; their over-consumption of food overwhelmed the insulin production in their pancreas, and diabetes was the result.  It's lucky we aren't spiders.  All of our webs would be sagging under the dead weight of our corpulent bodies.

 We would do well to take a lesson from the spiders and their web-based existence.  We don't need to live in houses that cost half a million dollars, and eat until our skin stretches, and our pancreas screams for mercy.  We need to find our niche.  God designed us to be lean and to live with hearts full of love.

I've discovered my niche, and it's called "less is better".  In this particular niche, I have less things in my life, and my body weighs less as well.  I have less infrastructure, and as a result, I have fewer worries.  The only thing I don't have less of is money.  You see, when you have less things, you naturally have more money.

"Less is better" is a great way to live.  If you want to travel far, you need to travel light.

Life is good.


 


Log 1 Peter Pan Around the World
Log 2 Weapons of Mackerel Destruction
Log 3 Pirates of the Malacca Straits
Log 4 Kissing Cobras
Log 5 Debriosaurus Rex
Log 6 Go Ahead - Live Your Dreams

Log 7 The Man Who Built His House on a Rock
Log 8 Ambivalent Eagles
Log 9 One-Shovel Full at a Time
Log 10 Hitchhiker's Guide to Planet Earth

Log 11 Keeshond

Log 12 The Red Sea Blues

Log 13 Feel the Freedom

Log 14 The Danger Zone

Log 15 Lucky Man
Log 16 Dream Machines - Land Rover Defenders

Log 17 Trade Wind Dreams
Log 18 Logs With Fins
Log 19 Everywhere, Everything
Log 20 Shark Slayer Is History

Log 21 Viking Funeral - Burial at Sea
Log 22 Improbable and Impossible

Log 23 Keep on Trucking
Log 24 Dream Machines II
Log 25 Bodysurfing Whales
Log 26 Hitting the Wall
Log 27 Surviving the Savage Seas

Log 28 The Next Step
Log 29 Welcome to Barbados
Log 30 Atlantic Rally for Cruisers
Log 31 The Man with the Unplan
Log 32 Dali Dolphins
Log 33 Flying Like a Turtle
Log 34 The Foolish Man Built His House on a Pitch Lake
Log 35 Go West Young Man
Log 36 Crossing the Atlantic in a Row Boat
Log 37 The Unsinkable HMS Diamond Rock
Log 38 Catamaran Capsize in 170 mph Winds
Log 39 When Are You Coming Home?

Log 40 Master and Commander of Anegada - Frigate Birds
Log 41 Baths of Virgin Gorda - Batholiths of Central Arabia

Log 42 Free at Last
Log 43 Stalking the Wild Manatee

Log 44 Spreaderman
Log 45 Attack of the Flesh Eating Bees
Log 46 Sharks and Coconuts
Log 47 Stingray Picnic
Log 48 Boo Boo Hill
Log 49 Whale Slayers
Log 50 Noddies (Not Naughty)

 

Log 51 Exumas Land and Sea Park
Log 52 David and Goliath
Log 53 Turquoise Clouds of Paradise

Log 54 Momma Nightjar
Log 55 Maximillian The Great
Log 56 Chiton Kingdom
Log 57 Flying and Holding On
Log 58 Far Horizons
Log 59 Clouds Are a Sailor's Friend
Log 60 Getting Connected
Log 61 Fear
Log 62 Grand Schemes and Other Important Things
Log 63 If Jellyfish Had a Brain
Log 64 Cousins That Don't Kiss
Log 65 Swimming With Sharks
Log 66 Perfect the Way You Are
Log 67 Space Travelers
Log 68 Aliens
Log 69 Monsters of the Mind
Log 70 My Butterfly Collection
Log 71 Somewhere Other Than Here Societies
Log 72 Five-Hundred Pound Spiders
Log 73 Red Sea Sunsets
Log 74 Gibraltar Sunrise
Log 75 Big Sea - Small Ship
Log 76 Just Cruising
Log 77 Castle Mania
Log 78 You Must Know the Sea
Log 79 Flying Like a Goat
Log 80 The Joy of Photography
Log 81 Universal Camouflage
Log 82 My Rainbow Collection
Log 83 Indian Ocean Reward
Log 84 Fiber W
Log 85 Turkish Reflections
Log 86 Mirrors and Mirages
Log 87 Lycean Tombs Rock
Log 88 Rigging Emergency
Log 89 Pamukkale
Log 90 Volcano Land
Log 91 Sniffing the Air
Log 92 Why I Don't Kite Surf
Log 93 Resurrecting Exit Only in Turkey
Log 94 Greased Pole Competition
Log 95 Tsunami Damage
Log 96 Afraid of Living
Log 97 Living on the Edge
Log 98 Borneo Adventure
Log 99 Uligamu Tree Tender with Full Benefits
Log 100 God's Fireworks Display

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This web site is a companion to Outback and Beyond.com.

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