the flapping

Whilst Edgar should be in no danger of developing a fear of spiders (he was poking at one on the curtains the other week, but has so far missed the giant one which clambers over his toys at night) or harvestmen (there was one in the corner of the kitchen near the tupperware cupboard yesterday morning which he got so close to he was in danger of inhaling it and it's never too early to learn the differences between them and spiders) there's a chance he might pick up on Nicky's irrational fear of smoths. I had to retrieve this one as it was apparently too close to her head and spent the next half-hour trying to take its picture before releasing it into the garden where I assume it was shortly eaten due to its broken wing. Disappointingly it wasn't one of the sorts of smoth with giant fernlike photogenic ears. I think the feartiness comes from the flappiness (similar to birds, also feared for their beaks) conflated with the "the average person swallows an average of four spiders a year whilst they sleep (the person, not the spider)" factoid, adapted to considering it a risk that a hairy dusty flapping smoth might fly into her mouth at night.