Then along came a spider ...

NATURAL PERSPECTIVES

If your reaction to spiders is scream and stomp, this might come

as a shock. Some people not only have no fear of spiders, they

deliberately buy them as pets. We talked to the owner of Prehistoric

Pets in Fountain Valley some time ago to see what kinds are most

popular. He said that people look for large, gentle, attractive

tarantulas because “who would want a small, mean, ugly spider?” Who,

indeed.

Last year, Vic and I went on a nighttime insect walk at Caspers

Wilderness Park. The ranger had a big tarantula on his arm. He

explained that spiders don’t usually bite people because they sense

that we are too big to eat. Apparently, they don’t want to waste the

venom.

The ranger asked if anyone wanted to hold the spider. Vic put up

his hand, but I put mine up faster. I’d always wondered what it would

feel like to have one of those big hairy things crawl on my arm.

Creepy is the answer.

The ranger put the tarantula on the back of my hand. It seemed

larger on my hand then it had looked from a safe distance. In fact,

it covered the back of my hand. This was one big spider. It didn’t

look particularly attractive, but I’m probably not a good judge of

what makes a spider pretty. I hoped it wasn’t one of those mean ones.

The tarantula felt prickly as it moved around on my hand. It

proceeded to crawl up my arm. They have tiny pinchers at the ends of

their feet, all eight of them, to help them hold on. The spider felt

my arm moving--probably because I was quaking in my hiking boots --

and it dug in to hold on.

The ranger explained that tarantulas are covered with stiff body

hairs. If the tarantula is annoyed, it will rub its belly with its

legs to “throw” the hairs at the source of danger. These hairs can be

quite irritating, especially if they get into a person’s eyes. This

is actually a bigger cause of visits to doctors in regard to

tarantulas than bites. I redoubled my efforts to not annoy the

spider.

As the tarantula continued to creep up my arm, I became more

concerned that this might be one of those mean spiders. I asked the

ranger how long he had owned this “pet.” He said he had just picked

it up off the ground after a brief flashlight search. Oh, boy.

Presumably I was only the second human this particular spider had

encountered, the ranger being the first. I asked him to remove the

spider from my arm, since it seemed to be showing an inordinate

interest in crawling onto my head.

We wouldn’t want a tarantula for a pet, but we do have plenty of

spiders in our surroundings. Long-legged cobweb spiders, popularly

but incorrectly called daddy longlegs, are harmless spiders that are

seen mostly indoors in high corners of rooms where they hang upside

down from amorphous webs. I’m not well known for my housekeeping

skills, so we usually have several scattered throughout the house. I

figure they’re doing us a favor by keeping down the indoor insect

population.

Another common and harmless local spider is the orb-weaving garden

spider, usually seen in the middle of a large, picture-perfect web

outdoors. These tan spiders are small during the summer, but grow to

prize-winning size in the fall. I like watching the garden spiders

spin their webs in the late afternoon. Of course it’s really gross to

walk into one of their webs -- they tend to spin them at face height

-- but I enjoy having them in the yard. They catch and eat insects,

helping to keep down whiteflies and houseflies. Some of the other

relatively harmless spiders that we have locally include wolf, crab,

and jumping spiders.

Not all spiders are harmless. Ones to avoid include the black

widow, which is very common locally. Their bite is quite painful, but

generally not lethal.

Bigger troublemakers are the brown recluse and the hobo, or

aggressive house spider, a fast-running brown spider that lives in

funnel-shaped webs along baseboards and windowsills in the house.

These spiders will bite if provoked or threatened and can cause a

painful, ulcerating lesion. We understand that a common reaction to

spiders is to squash first and ask questions later. But we hope

you’ll take the time to learn about different spider groups so you

can tell the beneficial ones from the harmful ones. Remember, you’re

not likely to get seriously hurt by a spider, just scared.

* VIC LEIPZIG and LOU MURRAY are Huntington Beach residents and

environmentalists. They can be reached at vicleipzig@aol.com.