Summary

"April in Paris" portrays the author as contemplative over nature documentaries he watched on t.v. He laments how obsessive viewers tend to care about the well-being of people's pets during natural disasters more so than the human beings involved themselves. Sedaris recalls Hurricane Katrina and how t.v. watchers wept over all the dead dogs and cats lost to flooding but not their owners. He then devotes time to dissecting a nature show about camels in which the camels were anthropomorphized and their plight made to echo a human-like emotional landscape.

One day in his French countryside cottage, Sedaris watched as a spider devoured a trapped fly. Fascinated, David studied the spider more closely, discovering she was a Tegenaria by species' name when he looked up the information. Soon, Sedaris named her April and was completely hooked on her...