Blog Dis
Along came a spider...
2024-10-10
There are a growing number of frisky spiders lurking about the dust bunnies in my apartment these days. I suspect the cooling temperatures have something to do with it, that and the fact that spiders are creatures of comfort, who enjoy living with humans.
Really though. There are an inordinate number of spiders in my place which I believe have hatched at some point in time when the sun started to set earlier, and now that the sun goes down earlier too, although just wait until the clocks fall back one hour in early November. I don't fear Mister Spider. I'll go out of my way to pick them up gently, to then release them in the corridor of my building. They can scoot underneath the small space between the doorway of another tenant and the floor, if they're adventurous.
It's an old habit of mine to avoid killing spiders because their role, like bats and birds, is to feed on the insect population in the world and within the walls of living habitats, like women's apartments. Trouble is, when I lived with two cats (RIP, little fur-heads) these predators cared nothing about ecosystems. If they saw a spider spinning downward on an invisible strand of sticky web, they were enthralled with the eight-legged creature and would attack, step on and summarily eat Mister Spider, much to their delight. Most house spiders are harmless but I am also very much aware that in Canada we have at least one variety of spider (widow: Lactrodectus spp.) that can cause health-related issues and in some cases serious issues with lung and nervous systems, but this variety is rare; tho' be mindful if you see a spider whose first three legs are much larger than the rest of its legs. They are mainly found in southern regions along the Canada/US border.
To live in fear of being bitten by one teensy weensy house spider is analogous to refusing to go out in your backyard for fear of being bitten by a mosquito that could potentially be a carrier of West-Nile virus. We simply can't live in fear, nor can any of us thrive living in a realm of fear. As I remind myself often: fear by its very nature is irrational but this doesn't mean that the emotions you have as a result of your fear are not genuine. It just helps if you can actively and consciously separate the two. However, and when in the deep woods hunting or camping, take your fear of the carnivores and the various biting insects seriously, and cover up, spray up, and know that you might be their next tasty meal.
Keeping a clean kitchen floor helps too, to minimize attracting other insects if they know there are left over food scraps, tiny pieces of food that've fallen, which our eyes may not see, until we sweep. I sweep every week, but surely not every day, and so this is one of my principal reasons why I avoid killing any belonging to the spider population in my abode, in order that they have something to bite, rather than me, while I sleep at night.
When I hiked the desert of Wadi Rum in Jordan in the Middle East, back in 2004, I had no option but to push fear out of my mind, to focus on the task at hand. My small tour group consisted of me, Caroline, Chris and Yuko, including our tour guide, Vince and our Bedouin guide Atilla and our one camel, Zanid, who hauled our water supply, while we walked alongside our surly camel [they are surprisingly strong, incidentally). We traversed a distance of 50 kilometers in four days in 48 degree temperatures which crawled up to the mid-50s during the high heat of the day, Noon to 3 pm. To this day, I still find it amusing when someone says to me, "Oh, but it's a dry heat, not like humidity heat." Try hiking in the desert, and you'll quickly discover the dry heat will suck out every last ounce of moisture in your body until your tongue feels worse than sandpaper. Every day, I guzzled upwards of four litres of water just to re-hydrate my skin and eyes. At the end of every day of eight hours of hiking, we would collapse on a mattress on the sand, to sleep under the stars, fully knowing that creatures were sharing the desert with us.
I don't fear spiders, any more than I feared the desert creatures. Our Bedouin guide would take a flash light before we made camp to hunt for poisonous snakes and scorpions. "Has anyone ever been bitten?" I asked one night, as the fire raged and we smoked a Shisha pipe. "Once," answered our guide, "we ordered a jeep to take him to hospital." I stared at our guide in silence, thinking what pain that must have been to endure the bite of a scorpion or a poisonous snake. "Is it really painful, to be bitten by a scorpion?" The guide hauled deeply on the Shisha pipe before answering. "Well, I can't say I've experienced the pain but if you saw the look on the guy's face you'd know he wasn't happy." I took his word at face-value. [He ended up spending one week in hospital getting treatment].
He never died, apparently. He survived, the same way we did by the end of our hike. I woke up on the last morning of our hike and discovered that a scorpion was right beside me or rather beside me while I had slept on top of my sleeping bag, though the scorpion wasn't moving because the sun had yet to warm up the sand. The temperature drops at night in the desert and the swing from extreme heat to surprising cold would shock you. Our guide pulled me away in a small state of panic because I was about to take a picture of the scorpion to show all of my friends (like an idiot-tourist). Our Bedouin guide, Atilla, on the other hand, hardly seemed fazed. I guess he sees scorpions all the time the way I do when it comes to spiders.
Nope. I don't fear spiders or scorpions, ticks or bats. If and when I feel fear, it's usually at the hands of my overactive imagination. House spiders merely tell me that I'm not alone on this planet and these creatures are probably more terrified of my presence than I am of theirs. I've heard though that a bowl of Scorpion soup is considered a delicacy, to which I shall pass. Maybe next time I'm hiking in the desert.
Really though. There are an inordinate number of spiders in my place which I believe have hatched at some point in time when the sun started to set earlier, and now that the sun goes down earlier too, although just wait until the clocks fall back one hour in early November. I don't fear Mister Spider. I'll go out of my way to pick them up gently, to then release them in the corridor of my building. They can scoot underneath the small space between the doorway of another tenant and the floor, if they're adventurous.
It's an old habit of mine to avoid killing spiders because their role, like bats and birds, is to feed on the insect population in the world and within the walls of living habitats, like women's apartments. Trouble is, when I lived with two cats (RIP, little fur-heads) these predators cared nothing about ecosystems. If they saw a spider spinning downward on an invisible strand of sticky web, they were enthralled with the eight-legged creature and would attack, step on and summarily eat Mister Spider, much to their delight. Most house spiders are harmless but I am also very much aware that in Canada we have at least one variety of spider (widow: Lactrodectus spp.) that can cause health-related issues and in some cases serious issues with lung and nervous systems, but this variety is rare; tho' be mindful if you see a spider whose first three legs are much larger than the rest of its legs. They are mainly found in southern regions along the Canada/US border.
To live in fear of being bitten by one teensy weensy house spider is analogous to refusing to go out in your backyard for fear of being bitten by a mosquito that could potentially be a carrier of West-Nile virus. We simply can't live in fear, nor can any of us thrive living in a realm of fear. As I remind myself often: fear by its very nature is irrational but this doesn't mean that the emotions you have as a result of your fear are not genuine. It just helps if you can actively and consciously separate the two. However, and when in the deep woods hunting or camping, take your fear of the carnivores and the various biting insects seriously, and cover up, spray up, and know that you might be their next tasty meal.
Keeping a clean kitchen floor helps too, to minimize attracting other insects if they know there are left over food scraps, tiny pieces of food that've fallen, which our eyes may not see, until we sweep. I sweep every week, but surely not every day, and so this is one of my principal reasons why I avoid killing any belonging to the spider population in my abode, in order that they have something to bite, rather than me, while I sleep at night.
When I hiked the desert of Wadi Rum in Jordan in the Middle East, back in 2004, I had no option but to push fear out of my mind, to focus on the task at hand. My small tour group consisted of me, Caroline, Chris and Yuko, including our tour guide, Vince and our Bedouin guide Atilla and our one camel, Zanid, who hauled our water supply, while we walked alongside our surly camel [they are surprisingly strong, incidentally). We traversed a distance of 50 kilometers in four days in 48 degree temperatures which crawled up to the mid-50s during the high heat of the day, Noon to 3 pm. To this day, I still find it amusing when someone says to me, "Oh, but it's a dry heat, not like humidity heat." Try hiking in the desert, and you'll quickly discover the dry heat will suck out every last ounce of moisture in your body until your tongue feels worse than sandpaper. Every day, I guzzled upwards of four litres of water just to re-hydrate my skin and eyes. At the end of every day of eight hours of hiking, we would collapse on a mattress on the sand, to sleep under the stars, fully knowing that creatures were sharing the desert with us.
I don't fear spiders, any more than I feared the desert creatures. Our Bedouin guide would take a flash light before we made camp to hunt for poisonous snakes and scorpions. "Has anyone ever been bitten?" I asked one night, as the fire raged and we smoked a Shisha pipe. "Once," answered our guide, "we ordered a jeep to take him to hospital." I stared at our guide in silence, thinking what pain that must have been to endure the bite of a scorpion or a poisonous snake. "Is it really painful, to be bitten by a scorpion?" The guide hauled deeply on the Shisha pipe before answering. "Well, I can't say I've experienced the pain but if you saw the look on the guy's face you'd know he wasn't happy." I took his word at face-value. [He ended up spending one week in hospital getting treatment].
He never died, apparently. He survived, the same way we did by the end of our hike. I woke up on the last morning of our hike and discovered that a scorpion was right beside me or rather beside me while I had slept on top of my sleeping bag, though the scorpion wasn't moving because the sun had yet to warm up the sand. The temperature drops at night in the desert and the swing from extreme heat to surprising cold would shock you. Our guide pulled me away in a small state of panic because I was about to take a picture of the scorpion to show all of my friends (like an idiot-tourist). Our Bedouin guide, Atilla, on the other hand, hardly seemed fazed. I guess he sees scorpions all the time the way I do when it comes to spiders.
Nope. I don't fear spiders or scorpions, ticks or bats. If and when I feel fear, it's usually at the hands of my overactive imagination. House spiders merely tell me that I'm not alone on this planet and these creatures are probably more terrified of my presence than I am of theirs. I've heard though that a bowl of Scorpion soup is considered a delicacy, to which I shall pass. Maybe next time I'm hiking in the desert.
