A couple years ago I wrote about a spider that spent the summer on my back porch. It was a type of orb weaver with a very interesting body. It was über creepy, but still very interesting.
While I witnessed no such guest this year, it’s the leftovers of Halloween (and all those spider decorations) that have arachnids on my mind. Plus, something on the Internet that had a headline claiming proof that spiders are out to get us.
I did not click on the link to see their proof, because I think that I can come up with enough perceived evidence just because spiders are just so darn sinister looking.
A few weeks ago I was sitting on my back porch. Perched on the step I was, right next to a big copper-colored planter that’s been there for several years.
I happened to look toward that planter when a wolf spider crept out from behind it and then it appeared to get me in its sights and swiftly skittered back from whence it came.
That the spider seemed to have taken notice of me freaked me out way more than the thought of the spider coming right at me. And you know what? The thought of that spider taking notice of this girl is still freaking me out.
Spiders may perform the thankless, grisly duties of insect control, but it is so darn difficult to get passed the way they look – that hairy, leggy, venomy, menacing appearance. If they were cute, well, that might change things some, at least as far as public relations are concerned.
The spider that prompted that previous column from me, well, it took me some time to perform the research into what it was because looking at the photos in a field guide really got my skin crawling. And writing about it now has my skin crawling again. It doesn’t take much when it comes to the hairy little creepies.
Anyway, I’m thinking about the creepy crawlies and my skin is creepy crawling, and here I am trying to write about it as I shudder a bit every few seconds because the physical reaction to even the possibility of a spider on my person is too much to bear.
Despite all that, I won’t kill a spider. If I find one in my house, I help it outside. I’m freaking out a little (or a lot) the whole way to the out of doors, but I help it get out of my house. Yeah, yeah, I know, it probably comes right back in through whatever crack afforded it entrance into my abode in the first place, and if that’s that case, I’ll just help it outside again.
I can’t take the spider’s life for just doing its thing, so I don’t. The heebie jeebies they give me are my problem to deal with, not the spider’s.
Incidentally, I checked into what deadly spiders call the Buckeye State home and I found references to the Black Widow and the Brown Recluse.
That’s not news to me as I have heard of their presence in my home state, but just hoped they weren’t really in our area. But either one could be and that’s something freaky, even if the articles I’m reading all say that both tend to shy away from humans, and that bites are rarely fatal to healthy adults. Just the possibility alone is almost too much for this girl as I sit here and type with my legs tucked into the dark under my desk. (Yeah, in my mind both spider types are hiding under there right now. Oh geez.)
OK. I’ve got to take a walk now, right this minute, and get away from the potentially spider-hiding darkness under my work space.
And as I prepare to skedaddle to well-lit places until my brain lets go of these willies, I just have a little suggestion to impart (in the form of some sort of Seussian poetic device apparently) — Spiders may be creepy and spiders may be crawly, but leave them be. They really are not out to get you or to get me.
Reach Angela Shepherd at 937-393-3456, ext. 1681, or on Twitter @wordyshepherd.
