Spiders from Mars

It is true when they say that dogs are mans best friends; this morning my dog turns out to be the best friend I have ever had.

I arrive into the kitchen and stop dead in my tracks - 2 dead spiders on the kitchen floor and there is our Border collie sitting with what can only be deciphered as a smug look spread across his little black and white face. I don't think I have ever loved or been as proud of my dog more than today.

For all those spider lovers out there, it is probably best that you give this post a miss, as trust me you will end up weeping if you continue to read on.

I am no fool; I am well aware of all the significant good works that the household spider carries out, for example eating flies. Solution: I have fly spray (raid) in an aerosol which quite efficiently terminates the flies and leaves much less mess than the spiders do in any case.

I am also not prepared to listen to anymore age old clichés about it being a good sign that you have spiders patrolling your homestead, for someone once said it means that I have a clean house. For the record I do not require a few 8 legged arachnids to tell me that I have a clean house - I spend hours on my hands and knees cleaning it personally so I can vouch for myself that my living space is perfectly clean.

I readily have a shoe in my hand ready to whack. I have tried the glass thing, but if I am in the house on my own, I can’t bear to see it stuck in there looking at me, tapping one leg in disgust that I managed to trap it. Anyway that is if I manage to get the glass over the bugger in the first place - they have the speed of Lewis Hamilton most of them.

Arachnophobia is apparently one of the most common phobias that people can suffer from. I have never been officially diagnosed but let’s just say I am 99% sure that I have a major problem with the 8 legged creatures that haunt my dreams as well as my day to day life. Indeed this may seem irrational to some but to others out there I know you are reading this and appreciating my spider loathing pain.  Do not attempt to tell me they are more afraid of me - in my case they appear to run TOWARDS me like an army crossing the enemy line.

It has often been considered that this seemingly irrational fear came from our evolutionary process and is simply a genetic malfunction stemming from a response to feelings of danger. Alternatively other camps suggest it may be a cultural trait that has been inherited over time. In some parts of the world where people eat spiders you will find a much lower statistics of people showing a genuine fear of spiders.  

However did you know that in our own Western culture up to 55% of all women suffer from arachnophobia and up to 18% of all men.

To be honest the professionals out there can deal with the statistics -as far as I am concerned it is a very real issue to me in the here and now and I have tried a number of things to try get over it.

You name it, I’ve tried it. Self help books, videos, trips to the zoo, forcing myself to face them. The worst experience of self help was when I met one of these travelling reptile people. The lovely man in green overalls came to our school once. He told me that he could "cure" my fear. I nervously held out my hand when requested and I could feel the soft almost pipe-cleaner like fabric on the palm of my hand. I opened my eyes to the dead black and yellow and maybe a little grey as I remember, tarantula.

It turns out that using dead tarantulas is a tool to calm people. Where they got their research from I shall to this day never know but I expect probably some charlatan from the Amazon jungle.  I was anything but calm. He then proceeded to turn the large hairy spider over to show me its “harmless" 2 bright white shiny fangs.

I have to admit, thinking back I considered myself extremely brave as I was still standing at this point and my heart was at least still beating. I actually felt a little proud of my achievement, so when he asked me to take it again, full of self assured confidence I held my hand out. No problem said I to myself, here comes the pipe cleaner, open the eyes.... Something was very different ... the pipe cleaner moved.
That was the end of that, my scream could have shattered a thousand windows and the lucky blighter was lucky not to have found himself 5 floors down, out the window, squished by a passing car. I remember it so clearly like it was this morning in my kitchen with 2 dead spiders before me.

Unlike many genuine people who suffer from this, I can actually pinpoint where this madness first manifested itself. I had mumps as a child and was running an incredibly high fever at the time, the Dr came out to the house to see me and that was the night where it all began. A simple tissue in the bed sheets, a fever of 101 and hallucinations that the tissue was in fact huge spiders crawling all over me.

Over the years, there have been many incidents which have precipitated my problem - the pyjama party I went to when I was 10, where it was a great joke to tie a spider on a string and dangle it over me as I woke up. Then there was the time one landed on me whilst driving from my sun visor above my head, I am lucky to still be alive to tell that tale.  Of note this also happened to a male friend of mine who actually damaged his car in the fright. There was also the time whilst I was relaxing in the bath, I saw the spindly legs creep out of the overflow as this brave 8 legged blighter launched itself into my bath for a midnight swim. There was when I was studying for my exams and all my paperwork was lying on the floor - I heard that particular spider before I saw it with the trrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr noise it made as it dashed towards me sitting on the floor. We had one particularly nasty one that when my mother threw it into our coal fire it actually jumped out ALIVE! They truly are the stuff of nightmares.

Yes, over the years I have battled my demons and can now at the grand old age of 30, at least manage to stay in the room with one without passing out or hyperventilating. If I hold my hands over my eyes I can even sneak a quick look at one in a book or on the National Geographic channel. I adore reality television at its worst and of course like many I am fascinated by I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here. Yet I find myself having to watch it with a spider adjudicator next to me who can tell me when it’s safe to watch the latest bug infested trial.

This leads me on to the last 2 weeks of our normally peaceful home which has been taken over by an invasion of giant spiders from what can only be described as alien beings from Mars. HUGE spiders that look like the size of a mouse when they run at lightning speed across the floor. So big that when you try to drown them the ball they curl up into in self defence refuses to flush down the plug hole. There was the one that ran out of my mans trainer and this one was so big that my normally cool as a cucumber partner let out a little shriek of panic. The worst one was a few days ago when I went to wrap myself in a towel and the nasty gigantic spider ran down my arm and then leapt for the safety of the bath and the nearest plug.

Hence bringing me back to today.

My dog, my best friend, my new spider killing partner; I suspect a nice juicy bone will be on the table for the dog tonight with a side dish of whatever he manages to catch in the next few hours.

I shall leave you with this last tale of spider woe... and a great lesson to all.

A good friend of mine was in the bathroom standing over the sink, looking into her mirror at her get of bed look, whilst brushing her teeth. She reached out for the glass she uses for her rinse out, lifted the glass and looked in- she always looks in. Who doesn't?  She lifted the glass to her mouth to rinse and there he was - a big long legged black spider hiding underneath the glass and before she had a chance to react he had ran up the glass, over her nose, across her head and leapt for the bathroom light fitting on mission impossible.

As they affectionately say at the end of Crimewatch, "Don't have nightmares".

Oh and did I ever tell you about my mother’s fear of snakes..... Another day perhaps.