Wolf Kisses and Spiders

In a quiet corner of Eureka, Minnesota there is a small farm, not unusual for these parts, but its occupants are not what you would expect.
Furever Wild owner Terri Petter runs a non-profit farm for "fur bearing animals" and hopes to educate the public by opening up the farm to visitors during the summer months.
Residents include Arctic Foxes, Prairie Dogs, a Bobcat, a Canadian Lynx, Fisher Martens, Porcupines, Raccoons, Red Foxes, Opossums, Skunks, Goats, Pigs, Rabbits and some 20 Grey Wolves.
In order to keep the farm solvent, Ms Petter puts aside a few weekends a year for photographers to come to the farm to get close to some of the wolf pups and raccoon kits. It's not the cheapest two and a half hours you'll spend, but for photographers it is often a once in a lifetime opportunity to get close to some elusive Minnesota wildlife.
Our group of nine photographers are taken to a clearing in a nearby forest a short hike where we are met by a team of volunteers and four energetic three-month-old wolf pups. It is a swamp..with a good four inches of water for pups to splash around in. There is no fence or enclosure, just a ring of volunteers ready to tackle any escapees, be they wolves or photographers.
The pups are let loose and instantly want to make friends with the humans. Those of us squatting in the swamp, trying to get photos of the pups at eye level, are knocked over by an enthusiastic puppy jumping into our lap and trying to drown us in dog-food-flavored wolf kisses. (There is a sentence I never thought I'd say!)
After they got used to us the puppies began scampering around the trees and through the water, testing the skills of the defensive line of volunteers. At three months old, any escapee was easily scooped up and carried back to the "preferred" area.
For the next hour they just couldn't stay still and were incredibly hard to photograph. They squabbled, they argued, they snapped at each other. They ran through the nearby woods, splashed around in the water and they were retrieved by volunteers dozens of times. So far all my photos were blurry shapes with tails.
Gradually though, they slowed down. They found some old bones and settled down to have a chew and that's when I got most of my photos. I was pretty much lying in the swamp by then, a swamp which I suspect was an outdoor bathroom for a variety of forest-type critters.
After we got our wolf photos the volunteers took the wolves away and came back with some tiny raccoon kits. They were incredibly cute and much easier to photograph. After about 20 minutes it was all over and we headed back to the farm.
I was soaked from the neck down, stank up the place pretty good, but pretty happy I spent the money. I was unaware of a creepy, swampy hitch-hiker who had found its way into my jacket.
I got home, hung up my jacket and watched in horror as the biggest spider I ever saw, climbed down the sleeve and dropped onto the kitchen floor.
Now I don't mind mice or rats, I am fairly ambivalent about most everything that crawls like snakes and cockroaches as long as they go one way and I go another....but swampy, creepy spiders as big as my fist are a deal breaker.
Of course I erupted into hysterics. Big burly not-afraid-of-anything husband came running. He saw the spider and went a strange grey color, said something unprintable and called the pest guy.
Pest Guy came and found Mr Spider and took him to a happy place somewhere away from me.
Don't think me and swamps were meant for each other.