Jennifer Chow always has time for two-legged and eight-legged friends

Jennifer Chow gives a third-grade class at Lansing Elementary School -- including Alyssa Lee, 8, left, and Kathy Heisler, 9, right -- a presentation about spiders on Dec. 16. Charles Harrington/University Photography

By Blaine P. Friedlander Jr.

Urban legends have it that alligators trace their way into backyards by way of sewers, rats crawl through plumbing into toilets and shoppers find tarantulas in grocery bags.

That last one, by the way, is true.

Pam Pedersen was unpacking groceries early this year at her student cooperative house on campus, when she took a final look into the grocery bag -- and let out a blood-curdling scream. Looking up from the bottom of the bag was a Costa Rican zebra tarantula.

In fact, it was a spider named Alice, belonging to Pedersen's housemate Jennifer Chow. The answer to why Alice was in the grocery bag instead of in a cage is connected to Chow's original plan to become a biological researcher. Cornell, however, broadened her perspective.

"I intended to do some kind of research, but by my sophomore year I was going through the Big Red Book and I reached the education page. That's when it dawned on me that I wanted to teach, I love working with kids," Chow said.

So she started taking a wider range of classes and joined Cornell's Teachers in Agriscience, Math and Sciences (TEAMS) program. Now, when she's not taking classes, she's tutoring middle-school students at the BOCES continuing education center in Ithaca. This year she also served as president of Cornell Chinese Kids' Club, a big-brother, big-sister organization for Chinese youth in the Ithaca community.

While broadening her own academic horizons, Chow enrolled in Entomology 215, or Spider Biology, taught by entomologist Linda Rayor.

"I went into the class with a real fear of spiders, but the class sounded interesting, and I wanted to get over my fear," she said.

That's when Chow obtained Alice, who began as a semester-long science project and ended up as a pet. "I enjoyed the class a lot, and at the end of the class Linda asked if anyone was interested in becoming a TA (teaching assistant). I was interested. "

She has visited over two dozen grade schools and middle schools in the Ithaca area, showing-and-telling about spiders. She can't go anywhere in Ithaca now, she said, without a student recognizing her. "They say, 'Look, that's the Spider Lady,'" she said.

This summer, she will be a volunteer at Ithaca's Sciencenter, and then she'll return to Cornell in the fall as a graduate student in education.

Along with Alice, Chow also has a Manx cat named Persey. Persey, said Chow, thought the tarantula was a cool-looking mouse and one day managed to knock Alice's hard-plastic cage off a shelf, breaking a part of it, which Chow replaced with plastic wrap. But Persey ripped open the plastic, allowing Alice to escape and end up in her roommate's grocery bag.

Despite the tribulations of errant tarantulas, Chow is focused on her goal. "Although I do have a strong fascination for spiders and tarantulas, my interest for them is actually rooted in my ability to teach others about something new and unique," she said. "My first loves are teaching biology and interacting with children."