They're not so itsy-bitsy
Arachnids inspire fear in usually fearless naturalist
By Callan Bentley
Flat Hat Variety Editor
There were 19 humans living on my freshman hall, but there were 20 sentient beings. The extra creature lived in the upper corner of a window overlooking the staircase we walked up and down every day. He was dark and he was hairy and he was big. He was a wolf spider, and we called him Rodriguez.
I have always been one of those kids who enjoys Mother Nature's creepy-crawlies. I collected insects as early as the age of four. I kept pet snakes, crayfish, and leeches. I fed my goldfish live worms. One of the most tender memories of my youth was sitting on the front porch with my mother watching a horde of slugs devouring some spilled Cheerios in our garden. Anything that lived under a log or made the girls squirm was a friend of mine. I loved them all. All, that is, except the spiders.
There is something about the way a spider moves, deadly efficient, bearing too many appendages, that has struck fear in my heart since I was a toddler. Even now, educated college man that I am, I have an irrational fear of spiders. When I see one traversing my desk or wall, my skin puckers into a landscape of goosebumps, and I scream for someone else to come dispatch it.
I am the case study for arachnophobia. Spiders scare the hell out of me.
I don't know why this is, though. Biologically, spiders are a fascinating group of animals. Many spin elaborate webs that trap pesky insects, and inject their prey with well-evolved toxic fangs. Others, like Rodriguez, lie in ambush or actively hunt their prey, snaring grasshoppers and whatnot through a combination of quick movement and deadly accuracy.
Spiders are grouped taxonomically in the order Araneae, which falls into the class Arachnida. Spiders are the most numerous of the arachnids, a group that also includes the scorpions, ticks, and daddy-longlegs. There are over 35,000 species of spiders worldwide, with about 3,000 of those residing in America.
Spiders can be differentiated from insects by the fact that they have four pairs of legs, while insects have only three pairs. It may look like spiders have more than that, as they have a set of two sensory pedipalps and a set of biting chelicerae in front and two spinnerets that project backwards from the abdomen.
All spiders are predators. Most feed on insects, though some relatives of the tarantula eat small vertebrate animals, including rodents and birds. These are strictly tropical species, however so you and I don't have to worry about them while we are living in Williamsburg.
Spiders have evolved to live in all kinds of places, including caves, under rocks, in trees, in houses, among grasses, and in the water. Some young spiders even take to the air in a phenomenon called "ballooning," when the spiderling spins a long thread to catch the wind and carry it to another area. Great thought, huh? Flying spiders!
Despite my fear, I should say that spiders have a definite place in the world, and they belong here more than I do. As the Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Insects and Spiders puts it, "Spiders are considered highly beneficial because they keep the burgeoning insect population in check. Few spiders bite people, and the venom of most is harmless."
The only two spiders that I have reason to really worry about in this area are the thin Brown Recluse, or Violin Spider (so called because of a purplish violin-shaped mark on its abdomen), and the infamous Black Widow, easily identifiable by the red hourglass-shaped mark on the underside of its bulbous abdomen. Of course, even this lethal Laurel and Hardy-shaped pair would prefer to stay far away from mean-spirited bipeds like myself than to come into contact with us and be forced to bite.
So my fear is (pretty much) illogical. I have no reason to detest these animals. Indeed, I should be thanking them for every mosquito that they suck dry.
Logically, then, it made no sense that I enjoyed killing Rodriguez so much. With a bloodlust that terrifies me even more than the spider itself did, I caught him and killed him in a bottle of rubbing alcohol. Why couldn't I feel safe with him living overhead in my stairwell?
Why did I feel so guilty
after he was dead?