the very busy spider

another cute birthday photo.
we have this eric carle book, the very busy spider, that t2 loves. it's his top choice nearly every night. now, i like eric carle. he's good clean fun.
but this one, the very busy spider, makes me mad. here's the deal. it's this spider and she gets blown across a field and lands on a fence post near a farm and starts spinning a web.
as she's making this web, various and assorted farm animals approach her and ask if she wants to play (pig wants her to go roll in the mud with him, the dog wants her to come chase a cat, the cat wants her to take a nap and so on). each time, the spider doesn't answer because 'she's too busy spinning her web.'
at the end of the day, she catches a fly in the web and then she falls asleep. she's so zonked she even misses hearing a compliment from an owl, who (hooo, hooo) says her web is very beautiful. and that's the end.
this spider, she's a pretty boring gal don't ya think? she's so caught up in getting her mundane tasks done that she misses all the fun on the farm. i mean, who wouldn't want to roll in the mud? where's the work-play balance?
that's the lesson i take from it (everytime she doesn't answer, i tell t2 how rude she is and how very boring her day is turning out to be), but i'm not sure that's the lesson the author intended.
i think maybe eric carle has some protestant work ethic hang ups that he hasn't really worked through. i halfway expect the very busy spider to be beamed straight to heaven and take a seat next to the almighty at the end of the book.
that said, if that spider is for hire i'm perfectly willing to hand over my dyson and a bottle of ajax and let her get her protestant work ethic on in my house.