“A woman went to Mexico on vacation and on her way home brings a cactus with her.  She waters the cactus every day and takes care of the new plant that reminds her of the time she spent while visiting Mexico.  However, after a few days she notices that the cactus starts moving on its own and appears to be breathing.  After awhile she calls a local Department of Agriculture and they tell her to shut all the doors and windows to her home and get out of the house immediately.  All of a sudden the cactus explodes, unleashing hundreds of baby tarantulas all over her house.”

Whitney told me that she first heard this story from a classmate at school in 9^th grade.  She said that at first she believed it but later heard a different version from someone else that made her skeptical to the verity of the legend.  A legend such as this could be told at any sort of situation when there is a group of people trading stories or urban legends.  This story clearly invites discussions about a person’s belief, whether they think something like this could actually happen or not, and it is set in the real world, definitely classifying it as a legend.  A person would tell this story to get more and more people talking about different stories that they heard and get other people’s opinions on whether they have heard the story and whether they believe it to be true.

I think that the legend is told to give people the notion that one should leave something where they found it, and also leave people with the impression that anything