Are you an Arachnophobe?

[mrstime]

When I was much younger, my sister told me spiders bring good luck and I actually believed her and was never really frightened by them, but Tarantulas used to sort of creep me out..... until I took a really close-up look at a dead one and saw how beautiful it was...

Many many years ago we lived in Southern Arizona, had a small garden. DH decided we needed to get some of those Tarantulas to eat the bugs in the garden. So out we went to gather up some of those big hairy spiders, got about a dozen after all they were all over the roads. Turned them loose in the garden thinking it should be spider heaven. Next day not one remained except the one squashed in the driveway. Ingrates didn't appreciate what we gave them.

A few months later I was watching a TV show on the various animals in Az. Found out that everyone of the tarantulas we had picked up was a male looking for love. Turns out the females live in an underground nest and rarely ever go more than a foot from the den . The fellows have to wander a lot to find that special someone.

 

[Fyrefox]

Now why is it that songs have been written about Muskrat Love, but none have been written about spider love? Wouldn’t Spider Love be a great song title for Ozzy Osbourne? And if spiders visited social media, would it be their web site? 🕸🕷

 

[caroln]

Any spider in my house is gonna see it's maker. Speaking of that, they say God never makes a mistake, but come on....spiders?
Maybe if he gave them their own planet to live on!

 

[OneEyedDiva]

I'm not afraid of spiders and don't like to kill them either. They sometimes come into my apartment and one day I was laying on the couch and watched one make it's way across the ceiling to a spot, sit there for awhile then follow the same path back to where he came from. It fascinated me and earned my respect (for some reason). Once I tried to get one onto a piece of cardboard and take it outside but it fell off and I couldn't find it. Another time a giant daddy long legs crawled out of an old compact washing machine that my husband neglected to clean before bringing it to the house. I was setting up the machine in the bathroom when he crawled out. I wasn't frightened but wound up killing it because I didn't know what else to do with it. I'm on the first floor and spiders sometimes make their way in here. If they don't bother me, I don't bother them because I know eventually they'll find their way out.

 

[StarSong]

I confess I have always had an extreme reaction to spiders -- the bigger and fuzzier the spider, the more extreme my reaction. I'm not sure it is exactly fear but maybe "extreme revulsion" might be closer. I know it is irrational, but it is a visceral thing I can't reason away.

Same here, though I don't have a problem with daddy long legs. If I spot a small spider in the house I usually live and let live. Big spiders are another matter. I call out the big guns for them (my husband).

We leave outdoor spiders alone unless they're black widows, which we kill. (We have young grandchildren and a very small dog roaming the yard). Just watched a youtube video about how to identify a brown recluse - pretty sure I've seen those in the yard, too.

My SIL is terrified of all spiders so my daughter is in charge of spider dispatch in their house.

 

[StarSong]

Hilarious:

Thanks for the memory of Johnny. He was a master of the deadpan reaction - and quite a good sport.

 

[Gary O']

Are you an Arachnophobe?​

Spiders I don't mind.
Fun to watch

Up at the cabin, they were all sizes

One morning, one got up on the edge of my bed covers
I think I scared him
We were eye to eye

His arms went up and his eyes got big

Then he skittered off

Cute little rascal

 

[Remy]

I too take spiders outside so the cats don't get them. I don't want them crawling on me but I like spiders. They are very important.

 

[David777]

Western Northern California given its rarely below freezing climate has an abundance of invertebrate life including spiders. As an outer suburban Sacramento kid, I grabbed and caught a long list of creatures but would never touch, spiders, centipedes, millipedes, houseflies, maggots, cockroaches, or slugs. At one of our homes, spiders could easily enter and we kids would often find a few climbing on our group bedroom walls. I would move my bed away from walls and pull up bed sheets so nothing was touching the floor a crawler might climb up by. At night, whenever I felt something crawling under bed sheets would spring up like a crazed jumping jack, remove all the bedding, I'd thoroughly shake before putting it back together.

Out in the fields, if any of we kids accidentally walked into one of the large garden spider webs, we'd run around frantically going berserk especially hands knocking off anything that might be on our head hair. Black widows are common even where I live now. I hate their ghastly horror house webs with the round white egg balls that tended to be in anything sitting outside very long. Any creeping crawler in my residence has a short life span...SPLATT! Though occasionally may capture whatever in a lidded cup then moved outdoors. Where I backpack in the High Sierra though there are few spider species, so one can sleep cowboy style without having to worry about creepy crawling things at night. Lower elevations always sleep under a head net or in a bivy sack.