How to Refuse the Void
We are not going in there. Nope
Hi, friends.
I’m writing this on a Friday, the last day of school/regular childcare before 2025. If you’re also a parent getting ready for the holiday and vacation marathon, cheers! I’m raising a virtual cocktail and/or very large coffee mug to you. (Lately I’ve been sneaking a scoop of hot chocolate mix into my coffee; don’t tell my children I’m having cocoa without them.)
No matter who’s in the house while you’re drinking your emotional support beverages, I hope we all find a few joyful moments and get some rest.
What I’ve Been Working On
Trying to figure out how I can revise another eight chapters of my book in about four work days. The math is…not really working out, no matter how many highlighter colors I use!
Also, gathering materials and annotating the heck out of my manuscript so I can send it to my fact-checker, and sending some of my own pre-fact-checking questions to sources. I did a decent job tracking my sources as I was working, but not a perfect job. Some questions that have sent me down rabbit holes include:
- Is is correct to describe a certain house I visited as peach stucco? Was it actually beige? Pink? Not stucco at all?
- Where in God’s name did I put that screenshot of a Facebook post from January 2022?
- Is it more accurate to say that clownfish fertilize anemones by peeing on them, or pooping?
Dear Inkfish
The holiday season is often overwhelming and depressing for me, and this year feels extra rough as I think ahead to what might come in 2025. How can I resist falling into a pit of darkness?
—Help Me A-Void the Void
I’m not a therapist—merely a science journalist dispensing advice to fake people—but your question makes me think of something I recently learned about a spider.
Isn’t she striking? This is an Amazon thorn spider. She belongs to the genus Micrathena, which includes at least eight species whose females have giant spikes on their butts.
Scientists aren’t sure why so many Micrathena spiders have evolved these threatening appendages. One species has spines longer than the female’s whole body. The spiders are orb-weavers, similar to the ones you might find building a fancy web of concentric circles on your porch. The spines seem like some kind of defense, but…how? Are a lot of hungry larger insects tripping and impaling themselves on the spiders?
Now, researchers who observed these spiders in the Amazon think the giant spines keep spiders from being stuffed into a hole.
One predator that orb-weavers have to watch out for is the mud-dauber wasp. A female wasp will paralyze another bug with venom, carry it to the mud nest in which she’s laid her eggs, cram the paralyzed bug inside, and seal everything up. When her babies hatch, they’ll eat the unfortunate victim she left them. (Meal prep!)
In two cases, the researchers in the Amazon saw mud-dauber wasps attempt to bring paralyzed Micrathena spiders back to their nests. The spiders simply did not fit. Their spines were wider than the nest entrance. One wasp ultimately gave up and left the spider on the ground, much like our movers when they tried to bring our old sofas into our condo.
The other wasp shoved the paralyzed spider partway in, then flew away for a while. She returned with more mud, which she packed down on top of the troublesome spines. Even so, the finished nest had spikes protruding.
Things didn’t work out great for those particular spiders. But perhaps, the researchers say, mud-dauber wasps learn from experiences like these that spiny spiders aren’t worth targeting. Or some wasps might have a genetic distaste for spiny spiders, which would help them survive and pass on their genes.
Either way, having huge spikes on their butts—and bright colors to remind predators who they are—may help keep these spiders alive. There’s a dark hole (filled with hungry mouths) just waiting for them to fall in. But they’re not going.
Evolution has not equipped humans with enormous butt spikes. But maybe you have some other gift, something within yourself that makes you the wrong shape to fit into the void. Whatever is weird about you, what’s spiky and gorgeous and too much, could be the thing that saves you.