Here Comes Treble: Arachnids Ahoy
"Suspended in mid-air on an invisible thread, a tiny black spider swayed in the breeze from the open window. It was so small; I could only just make out its minute body and the fuzzy frieze that was its legs. Being in a magnanimous mood, I left it in peace,'' writes our columnist Isabel Bradley.
As a child, however, I was not so generous. My father knew that if I shrieked, he needed to deal with a spider – usually rescuing it and putting it into the garden. They were mostly small, jumping spiders or somewhat larger, stringy, ‘daddy-long-legs’ who are actually very useful around the house: they eat ants and mosquitoes. I know now that they should be left to their own devices.
As an adult, I’ve learned to tolerate many types of arachnid, and to deal with most of the rest on my own. My various husbands have been particularly unsympathetic about my dislike of spiders.
Our current garden has vines that grow against the walls of the house, which the garden of my childhood did not have. These vines are home to a number of spiders, among them the nasty black widow, also known in South Africa as the button spider, and a type of tarantula known as the baboon spider.
Occasionally one or two of their number find their way, uninvited, into our home, and need to be dealt with.
Any button spider I see will be given a blast of aerosol insecticide, any sacs of eggs that they’ve been careless enough to leave in their webs being ruthlessly squashed with my shoe.
A few years ago I was in the bathroom, standing on the toilet pedestal, dusting the burglar-bars across the open window, when a great, hairy baboon spider, frightened by the flailing feather-duster, leapt down onto the floor, brushing past my cheek. I shrieked louder that day than ever I did in my childhood. Dad certainly wasn’t around any longer, and Leon was at work. I rushed to the kitchen, grabbed the broom, and swept the beastly animal outside. I still shudder when I come across baboon spiders.
At least once a year, one of these hairy monsters will find its way inside and peer around a curtain, or crawl across a burglar-alarm sensor, setting the alarm wailing. Occasionally, and at their worst they scuttle across walls, or leap ‘at’ one, though in that case, they’re probably innocently trying to escape, looking for a way back to the garden. Leon, if he’s home when these monsters appear, catches them by trapping them in an upside-down jar and sliding a piece of paper between the opening and the floor. He then seals the jar with its lid and puts it in the refrigerator to hibernate, which causes me some anxiety every time I open the fridge. After a few hours, he takes it out to a sunny, paved spot in the garden, where he releases it and photographs it as it slowly wakes up.
If I feel at all threatened by these small creatures, for instance, if they’re approaching the bed, or about to crawl on me, my killer instinct is let loose.
My step-daughter, who was raised in small-town-Southern-Africa but has spent her adult life in, England, was at one time unreasonably terrified of even the tiniest, most harmless spider. For years, she wouldn’t open the door onto her small English garden, referring to it as ‘spider alley’. Each time we visited, Leon insisted on opening the door, cleaning all the cobwebs off the seals and letting in fresh air.
A few years ago, while we were staying with her and her family, Viv became almost-hysterical at the presence of an infinitesimal eight-legged visitor on the arm of her chair, the hysteria spreading quickly to her two very young daughters. Big, brave step-mom-cum-granny tried to come to the rescue with her shoe, but the spider was too fast for me and escaped, never to be seen again.
Recently, though, Viv sent us photos of the children holding a great, hairy tarantula at a petting zoo. What a wondrous change of attitude, one which I do not share.
While I was secretary at Weltevreden Park Primary School, a closed circuit TV camera was installed, trained on the gate, with the monitor in my office. One morning, I looked up at the screen, to see it focussed on – and filled by – a giant spider. Of course, I shrieked. Who wouldn’t? I took a deep breath, then spoke very calmly on the intercom to the school’s Mr Fixit, Grade 6 teacher Herman Bresler, explained the problem and asked him to rescue me from this fiendish vision.
Herman kindly abandoned his class and rushed downstairs, going straight to the camera. Within moments, his hand appeared above the image of the spider, and the screen miraculously cleared. He came into the office, grinning from ear to ear, to show me the spider in his hand: a tiny jumping spider, about one-tenth the size of my smallest finger-nail. The offending arachnid was gently released into the bushes outside the office.
Serious arachnophobia is a very real fear of eight-legged creatures, hard to explain and sometimes incredibly difficult to live with.
Thankfully, I am only mildly agitated by most spiders I encounter.
Until next time…. ‘here comes Treble!’
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by Isabel Bradley
