In 2011, Brother Willem Van Der Hengst invited me to the Double Harvest compound in Haiti to speak at the Bible Institute. I spoke for a week to the preachers on the topic of Biblical Creationism. The last day, I commissioned one of the neighborhood boys to catch me a tarantula to take home. I gave him two packs of peanut butter crackers, so he brought me two tarantulas. One I kept in a Pringle’s can and the other in a plastic Sprite bottle. I cut the plastic bottle in half and put it back together using three small screws. I planned to give the tarantulas to my eight-year-old grandson. My family was already in Gulf Shores on vacation, so I flew from Port-au-Prince to Pensacola. I carried the tarantulas in my checked luggage. The customs declaration clearly said, “no insects,” but tarantulas are arachnids, so I honestly signed the I-94 customs document stating that I wasn’t bringing any insects into the country. I got to the condo in Gulf Shores and began unpacking. My daughter asked, “Did you bring us anything back from Haiti?” With a sly grin, I got out the Pringle’s can and said, “Look for yourself.” And I opened the lid for her to look inside. But I was shocked to see nothing inside! She screamed and I saw the tarantula hanging on the lid that I was holding! I dropped the lid, the spider fell to the ground, and the spider began to scurry toward the darkness under the clothes dryer. I corralled it with a broom and got it back inside the Pringle’s can. That morning I went to a nearby pet store to get some spider food. The pet store owner was a wealth of spider knowledge. There are over 700 varieties of tarantulas in the world, and the Haitian Brown is among the top ten deadliest! So much for giving them to my grandson. Isaiah could have been speaking of me when he said in Isaiah 5:21, “Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight!” What I thought was a good gift could have been disastrous! Not real smart, Gerald, not real smart at all.
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