The Terrarium at 11 PM

I was about to pick the mealworm out with my tweezers when it crawled right between the spider’s two front legs. The spider arched up, lifted its whole body off the substrate, let the worm pass underneath and out the back, then settled back down. About half a minute later, it suddenly turned around and grabbed the worm by the head.

I looked at it. It didn’t look back. I went on watering the blue‑legged one next to it, dripping a few drops onto the substrate with a pipette. It poked half its body out of its burrow, touched the water, and pulled back.

That night I wrote it down in my phone’s notes. The title was “dummy.” No explanation.

People who keep these things rarely explain. When friends come over and see the shelving unit, their first move is half a step back. Their second is: “Why do you have that?” I once tried “the colors are nice.” They glanced at the gray‑brown tarantula and said, “Where?” So I stopped. When they ask now, I hand them a glass of water, tell them to sit on the sofa, and go back to misting the mantis.

The mantis came from an ootheca last year: black, peanut‑sized, a first‑instar nymph, completely dark. After each molt it got bigger, the color slowly shifted to green, patterns appearing on its back. On the night of its eighth molt, it hung upside down from the top of the mesh cage. Its thorax split open along a seam, and it pushed itself out bit by bit, wings crumpled, then slowly unfurled. The whole thing took four hours. I didn’t fast‑forward. I crouched there watching, legs numb, not moving. When the wings finally spread fully – translucent, patterned, twelve centimeters long – I clipped ten seconds of that moment, sent it to a group chat, and typed two characters: “It lived.”

Snake shedding is different. That corn snake had cloudy eyes for three days: gray‑white, bad‑tempered, jerking back whenever I touched the enclosure. On the fourth morning, it rubbed its head against a rough piece of driftwood, worked up a tear, and from there began peeling the old skin backward, like pulling off a sock, inch by inch. I sat beside it eating breakfast, toast held still in my mouth, watching the new scales come through: orange and white stripes a shade brighter than before. It shed the entire skin in one piece, coiled into a circle, the old skin crumpled in the corner. I picked it out with tweezers, put it in a clear zip bag, and wrote the date on the bag. There were already a dozen bags in the cabinet, each folded flat.

A friend once asked me if these things have feelings. I thought about it and said I don’t know. It doesn’t recognize me, but I know when it wants to hide and when it’s hungry. Once it refused food: left the mouse in the corner for three days. I turned the temperature up one degree. On the fourth day, it ate. That’s not feelings. That’s order. But order is reassuring.

Another good thing about keeping these is you don’t have to talk. Come home from work, turn on the light, check each enclosure: fresh dirt at the tarantula’s burrow entrance? Has the mantis changed branches? Is the snake soaking in the water bowl or coiled on the heat mat? No greeting, no response needed. They just exist. The trickle of water, the faint hum of the heat mats – they blend into white noise. Sometimes I sit in front of them for twenty minutes, do nothing, then get up and take a shower.

I was scared at first too. The first tarantula was a Chilean rose. When I put it in my palm, the hairs on my arms stood up. It crawled slowly across my hand, its foot hairs brushing my skin like static. I lasted thirty seconds and put it back. Then I took it out a little every day: thirty seconds, then a minute, then five. Now, when I write, it sits beside the keyboard, still, and waits until I’m done to go back. I still don’t know if it likes it. But it hasn’t bitten me.

Some people keep these to post photos, to scare others, or to prove they’re brave. I went through that phase too. The first year I bought a dozen species, sorted by origin, color, size, posted nine‑grid collages on social media. Later, those spiders grew, molted, mated, laid eggs, and I was too busy keeping the oothecae humid to take pictures. Later still, after I’d bred all the collected species through several generations, I started recording each individual’s feeding frequency and burrowing habits. One spring I noticed a certain arboreal mantis only hunted around nine in the morning, completely still in the afternoon. I wrote that down in a spreadsheet and put a question mark next to it. No one asked. I didn’t have an answer either. But that question mark made me happy.

I don’t keep cats or dogs. A friend brought his dog over once. The dog barked twice at the enclosures, then ran off to knock over the trash can. My friend picked the dog up and said sorry. I said it’s fine, dogs are like that. I didn’t mean it as a complaint. They’re just too loud. Cats and dogs want your attention, they want to go out, they bark, they rub against you – all of that wears me out. Spiders don’t. Snakes don’t. Mantises don’t. They just need stability: stable temperature, stable humidity, a steady feeding schedule. I set it right, and they live by their own rhythm. I never feel guilty for not playing with them.

At eleven at night, I turn off the desk lamp and go to the kitchen for water. Passing the shelving unit, I glance over: the red‑kneed tarantula – the one that let the worm pass – has sealed its burrow opening a little more today, leaving just a slit, two front legs poking out as if waiting for something. The mantis stays frozen on a dead twig, wings folded, indistinguishable from a dried leaf. The snake is coiled at the center of the heat mat, chin resting on its own body, breathing slow, its belly scales rising and falling with each breath. Everything is exactly where it should be.

I finish my water and head to the bedroom. In the hallway, the red indicator lights of the heat mats glow one after another, like a row of small warning signs. I know they’ll still be there tomorrow morning. They won’t move. They won’t wake me. That’s fine.

I turn off the hallway light.