Salute to spiders

By Robert Guttersohn | October 21, 2011 at 12:00a.m.

Liberty

The halls near the commons gymnasium between Liberty’s elementary and middle schools were covered in cotton webs Thursday.

The webs continued into the gymnasium, wrapping around cardboard pillars covered with etchings and poems on spiders.

Lining the gym, students stood next to plastic crates, each filled with a different variety of spider.

And in the middle of it all, with two furry, eight-legged arachnids springing from her hair band, was the orchestrator of the 17th annual Spider Fest, Marla Dull.

“I had to do this in college,” said Dull, the seventh-grade science teacher at Guy Middle School. “I had to catch a spider and keep it as a pet. And I didn’t like spiders.”

She brought that concept to her students, requiring them to catch spiders, create a habitat, research them and capture web samples for a research binder.

On display were 32 wolf spiders, 24 orb weavers, two jumping spiders, eight cellar spiders and seven grass spiders.

“We’ve had some tarantulas that kids had as pets and brought them in,” Dull said.

But the pets did not count toward their grade, because the process of catching the wild spiders helps students understand the environment around them, Dull said.

John Spivey, who had the largest spider of the year, caught his almond-sized wolf spider in a family friend’s farm about two weeks ago.

“I feed him crickets,” the 12-year-old said. “They eat them very quickly.”

Caitlynn Merryman, 13, and Samantha Serrano, 12, caught their orb weaver spider beneath a cornhole wooden slab.

“We named her Mama Bubbles,” Caitlynn said.

Every year, seventh-grade students enter a contest to design the T-shirt for the event. This year, 12-year-old Jala Beasley-Williams won with a pencil etching of a web that was silk-screened onto baby-blue shirts with Spider Fest 2011 scripted in green.

The event involves more than just the seventh-grade science class.

Throughout the day, elementary students, some with paper spider hats, got a tour of the displays. Drawings of spiders from art students and poetry from language-arts classes also are part of the event. And parents got to check out the displays at night .

In addition, the events have helped Dull get over her fear of spiders.

“We’ve had some escape,” Dull said. “But that’s OK. We just put them on a piece of paper and put them back inside.”