Open Writing

Who's afraid of the big, bad . . . spider?

Me, that's who. And if it's a wolf spider—shivers.

But wait, this is only partly true.

First, I will say, that I grew up in a country where spiders never got much bigger than a thumb nail, but they could still send my girl friend and myself into a near panic. In Australia, of course, these creatures often measure up to palm size.

Why are people scared of various animals? Some people have phobias, which can be hard, but not impossible, to get rid of. At my work, a young, big, strapping bloke admitted to be scared of mice. (Sniggers!). His farmer uncle had a mice plague by the millions, when he was visiting as a small boy. Whereas I treat snakes with respect (all Tasmanian snakes are highly poisonous), I am not scared of them as such; I once held and stroked a harmless snake at an animal park. I still could not, though, hold a harmless spider, unlike the bloke, whose hand is shown.

Here is an extract from a book called Things that Sting by Eric Worrell: 'Funnel-like open webs found in lawns often belong to Wolf spiders, which are relatively harmless . . . The males may vary from one to two centimetres; the females are larger. The female Wolf Spider carries its egg sac on its back. The tiny young scramble onto the mother's back when they hatch and are carried about for several days. These spiders are often killed unnecessarily, because they are mistaken for Funnel-webs.' (Gerda: Funnel-webs are very dangerous, especially the Sydney ones).

When living in Victoria, one day I saw on the lawn a fair-sized spider with a white back. Maybe because the whiteness was unexpected, I recoiled. Then I came to my senses, and I said a prayer 'Dear God, help me not to be so scared of one of your other creatures.' And do you know what? I suddenly saw that the white 'body' was an egg sac. As a mother, that made me ashamed. Here was a different mother, albeit with eight legs, transporting her offspring to a safer spot. (Do you know, that spiders and crabs are way back related? I saw that on a nature show on TV. Who likes crabmeat?). My mother heart went out to that spider on my lawn.

That has not stopped my hair standing on end, every time a huntsman spider makes an appearance inside, usually after windy weather, like the time one was in my underwear in a drawer. Worse is, when they are in the car. I wonder, how many single car fatal accidents, unexplained, might have been caused by a spider?

The other day, in the bathroom, I reached for a plastic bottle of cream. What's that black elastic doing on that bottle? I thought (I did not have my glasses on). I grabbed the bottle, and also the legs of a gi-normous huntsman. It and bottle hit the floor, but I was nowhere as rattled as I used to be. I stepped over it, got the special broom, and the Huntsman (Huntswoman?) obliged me by crawling onto it immediately and thus got taken alive outside, where it, in my opinion, belongs more than inside!

There are people, who come to Tasmania just to collect spiders. I wonder if that is legal?

If we all could only see how marvelous even the feared creatures are made, like naturalists can, may we possibly start liking more of them?

© Gerda Aaberg