![[sic]](http://www.wildbell.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/cropped-bell.jpg)
Up until a few moments before this picture was taken on Santa Cruz Island in 2004, if you’d said I’d ever get this close to a Jerusalem cricket aka potato bug without having to be physically restrained and sedated, I would’ve punched you in the arm and said you were nutso.
But there I am. Letting one crawl upon my hand (albeit begloved) that we found near the site of one of the island fox captive breeding pens we were invited to the island to build (see previous post).
After the jump is a reprint from the archives about the childhood backstory to the phobia and this fateful encounter that to me is indicative of my present respect and consideration for all critters — especially the ones prone to illicit irrational revulsion. Except maybe camel spiders — I’m still working on accepting them into the big circle of life.