The Harvestmen Cometh in Life's Postcards | World Anvil

The Harvestmen Cometh

When I was younger I had an old riding car, one of the simple mechanical ones run by foot power on either side of the seat. The steering wheel didn't steer very well – I needed to use foot power for that too – but it did have a horn which actually made noise if I hit it with my palm hard and fast enough. And the seat! The plastic seat was on a hinge and had a deep pocket inside, maybe the size of an average shoebox, a little more narrow but much deeper. This was one of my favorite features.   My parents decided to bring it camping one summer. We did the car camping thing a lot when I was younger, the sort where we'd park at a campsite that my mother always insisted be closeish to the brick bathhouse but not close enough people would wake us up early morning with their conversations and flashlights when they used it, and we'd just set up a tent and maybe go hiking or swimming or sometimes they'd have nature programs and things. I would spend hours riding around the local camping area on this little toy car and my parents didn't have to constantly entertain me in the middle of the woods.   But they probably should have watched me closer.   Each day I'd fill the pocket under the seat with whatever items caught my fancy in my explorations: unusual or pretty rocks, soft moss to play with, bird feathers, random bits of tree bark. And every day I'd present them to my parents, and they'd make a small fuss over my findings and go back to their work. I've actually been back to that campsite since. There's actually a large moss blanket where my moss collection decided to take root and continue to grow.   As was tradition, one day as my mother was cooking dinner on the camp stove, I backed up the car to reveal the day's collections.   Spiders. That day, I had filled it with spiders. Well, arachnids. Harvestmen, to be precise, although most know them as Daddy Longlegs. They were out of patience, tired of being cramped together in this tiny, bumpy space and they wanted out. All over our campsite.   The car, sadly, never came camping with us again.


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