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founding

I wanted to mention this yesterday - I had a feeling that more than three members of this real vampires Yahoo Group mailing list about 25 years ago were autistic, because when we had a weekend get-together in November 2000 in Cincinnati, and a group of us (at least five of us) went to Jungle Jim's, it was impossible to keep us all together because a couple folks were being sensory-seeking and a couple of us were having sensory overload.

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I loved the part about the garden spider. We had those where I grew up in rural Illinois and I always loved them. I would catch bugs to toss in their web and watch them wrap up their prey. I never thought of safeguarding the eggs though. Brilliant! I did do that with butterflies and moths. I would collect the caterpillars and place them in an old aquarium that I placed mesh screen on top of. I would keep them fed on whatever food source I found them on or research their food source. Then I would wait for them to make their chrysalis or cocoon. I often got to see them hatch. I would let them go once they were dry and ready to fly. I did have an extensive insect collection though, because of course I did, so may sacrifice one if I did not have it in my collection. I got to the point where I was only missing one type of swallowtail that was native to my region and convinced my dad to plant a paw paw tree because supposedly that was what the zebra swallowtail caterpillar ate. Unfortunately, I never got a zebra swallowtail and by 5th grade I was heavily masking and was convinced insect collecting was no longer cool.

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I was not expecting the Chris Ledoux mention! That rodeo style country was my dad’s special interest and he was close with Chris. So it’s always a head turner when I hear his name not in a musical or rodeo context.

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