Afraid of Spiders

When Pam mentioned a persistent fear of spiders, I thought of a story I told at my local speaking club. It was called "Afraid of Spiders".

Opening: Campers! Have you ever been frightened by insects?
Have you ever bee riding in a fast car, when a stinging flew in the window? Fear fills the car. It is enough to force the car off the road!
It’s astonishing how much fear insects generate!

As a child, I was fearful of 3 kinds of insect: ones that could fly, ones that could sting, and SPIDERS.

One summer day, I was 9 years old and bicycling across a field of short grass. I nearly collided with an unidentified flying insect. His body was round and fuzzy, yellow and black. I was pretty sure he could sting. I concluded he was a “flying, stinging spider.” Have you ever collided with a flying, stinging spider?
I’ll bet you have. You just call it another name – Mr. Bumblebee.

Body: I am not afraid of spiders today, though.
I have mastered my fear . I would like to tell you a true personal story about . . . How I lost my fear of spiders
When I served as a Peace Corps volunteer, I was sent to a moist, tropical island named Tongatapu, located in the South Pacific Ocean.
Vines grew huge there, and their shining green leaves were bigger than an elephant’s ear. Vanilla beans, watermelons, and coconuts grew plump and juicy. These were the cash crops.
Insects thrived on Tongatapu, too. Wasps lingered in the shade of thorny lemon trees and guarded their fruit. Cockroaches were as long as your finger, and as fat as a cigar. They could run as fast as a small, agile mouse, and even fly if you irritated them.

My Peace Corps assignment was to teach English at a rural boarding school. A school “in the bush”, they called it. My house was built of cinder blocks, and had glass pane louver windows. There were no screens! Nothing to stop moths and other light-seeking insects at night, nor was there any weather stripping to stop big cockroaches from exploring my book shelves and kitchen cupboards.

I had a roommate. He was from Japan, and his name was Masa Tamura. He taught art classes. In the evening, Masa and I would relax in our deep canvas lounge chairs, chat about teaching, and watch geckos on the walls and ceiling capture the slower insects . It was fun watching the predators on the ceiling. We had lots of leisure and few distractions.

Geckos didn’t catch cockroaches. They were too big, and their waxy wings probably tasted icky, too. Perhaps cockroaches had no predators! (Said to survive an atomic war.)
Cockroaches were rude for they would interrupt our evening chats, by scuttling across the woven (padanus) floor mats. There were far too many to exterminate them, out there, “in the bush”. When runaway cockroaches interrupted us, we would just have to pause, forget them, and return to pleasanter topics.
The first time I ever gazed on my tropical shack,
I noticed large, spider webs hanging from the roof corners of my house to the house walls. They hung like bizarre banners. .
I did not want my home to look spooky, like a ghost ! I resolved to knock down ALL the webs on the next house cleaning weekend.
The species of spiders who tended these webs had bodies that were round and plump. Their bodies were as big as gumdrops, and their smooth, tapered legs were well adapted for outrunning and jumping on their prey.
Most weekends I didn’t “clean house”. I was out on my bicycle, exploring or in the ocean, snorkeling. I didn’t knock down those spooky webs right away. Eventually though, I found a Saturday for cleaning. How satisfied I felt after I knocked down the webs and wiped those those sticky webs of the brooms!

The next evening, Masa and I relaxed in our deep lounge chairs and chatted about school. The geckos on the walls were livelier than usual. There were a lot more moths and slow moving beetles up and about that evening. Masa and I remarked and wondered about this. And the cockroaches interrupted us, too. They were certainly more numerous and more invasive than usual.
As we sat there on this busy, muggy evening, suddenly I knew! Those large house spiders, the ones with the over size webs and gumdrop bodies were the predators of the cockroaches. The only predators!! When I knocked down their webs, I had disrupted the balance of power in favor of the cockroaches!! I had changed the Ecosystem around my house, and had chased out my Allies!!
I so wanted to have the spooky house webs back!
I waited and I waited. The webs did return eventually.
“Oh Mr. Gumdrop Spider! How nice of you to return! Do stay awhile!” Mr and Mrs Gumdrop Spider did return.
I minded their curious looking egg pouches, and even placed them on window sills where I wanted to see more baby spiders guarding my house. Having welcomed back my allies, the spiders, they showed me their good side by chasing many cockroaches away from the living room of my tropical shack.
To this day, I remember the patient service Mr and Ms Spider showed me.
Believe me, I never panicked about spiders after that.
They are my Allies and they catch ickier things!