Arachno-Whatever

Someone at work recently got bitten by a brown recluse spider. This isn't a fun event, not something you look forward to. I don't think the bite itself caused any real harm but the antibiotics they gave her fucked her up for a bit. I've seen pictures of the brown recluse, with its little violin pattern, but I bet I couldn't spot a real one if you paid me. People have good reaon to fear the brown recluse (although not as much as, say, the funnel web spider in Australia, which might be lurking under your toilet seat, ready to bite you in the balls). Most people, however, have some fear of regular, harmless spiders as well.

I don't mean that they scream and piss their pants in fear when they see one, I just don't think most people would readily pick up a spider and let it crawl on them. To be more specific, I'm talking about medium sized house and garden spiders here; the really small ones are no problem for most non-pants-pissers, and the great big tarantulas aren't usually an issue in suburban St.Louis. Medium sized spiders tend to require more indirect handling - cup and card for example - than a direct "pick it up by the leg" approach.

Of course the sheer number of bugs here mean that we get the house sprayed periodically which definitely keeps the spider numbers down. In England, by contrast, bugs don't come into the house much because a) there aren't as many, and b) houses are proper brick things and not the overgrown plywood sheds that pass for construction in the Midwest. Many's the evening I've sat watching TV there when a giant brown house spider has scurried across the carpet, its big eyes on stalks. (For some reason bricks don't keep those bastards out.)

So why are people reluctant to pick up spiders? It's not because of the danger - you know that large spider in the web by the back door can't hurt you. Of course this doesn't stop you flailing around spastically when you accidentally walk through the web - it's on you somewhere and you've got to get it off! And it's not a general aversion to creepy-crawlies; some poeple happily pick up woodlice (roly-polys) or other bugs. Perhaps it's the extra legs, some primordial memory that instructs us not to trust anything with that combination of appendages.

I happily pick up small spiders, and will let huge insects and spiders walk on me (giant millipedes are great fun - six inches long!) but I won't pick up those large black, slightly hairy, spindly bastards that you find in the corner of an old outhouse. I remeber going fishing with a mate called Tom - we left really early in the morning and by the time we got to the lake I needed a crap. The single metal portapotty was old and ricketty but OK - until I was comfortably seated. Then Tom banged hard on the wall for a laugh, dislodging about a dozen arachnids that had been resting above my head. Dick.

I've brought up my daughter to like bugs, which means that far from fearing them she's always building them little habitats and bringing them in the house. She never learned the spider size distinction, though. When she was smaller she would regard anything with legs as fair game, pick it up and bring it to me as a special gift. It didn't bother me though - if she had a huge spider I would just direct her to offer it to Mrs. Bison. "You know Mum would like your new friend..."


Copyright 2007 Edward Bison