How I Learned to Respect Spiders Rather Than Fear Them

Are you afraid of spiders? I'm not sure what caused me to have arachnophobia, but I have been afraid of spiders for as long as I can remember. I know my fear was irrational, but if it had 8 legs, then I was deathly afraid of it. I had such a fear of spiders that I couldn't sleep at night thinking that one might find its way onto my bed. I did wake up once and find a black hairy spider on my pillow, and since then I have been worried about having unwanted company in my bed.

I decided to take some action to get rid of my fear, just because I do like sleeping at night. I believe in taking baby steps when I am working toward some momentous goal in my life, and this was no different. I started reading all I could find about spiders. One of the most amazing things I learned was about the kinds of webs they make. Guess what? Most harmful spiders make messy webs, while good spiders make pretty orb-like webs with a symmetrical pattern.

Most spiders are not harmful

First, I believe it is important for arachnophobes to know that most spiders are not harmful to humans. They have fangs, and all spiders have venom, but most won't even attempt to bite you unless they get trapped and get pinched or get pressured against your skin.

Many spiders' fangs are not strong enough or long enough to puncture the skin of a human, and if they can puncture the skin, their venom is not potent enough to bother us. There are exceptions, there are two poisonous spiders that I know of in the United States-there may be more than two, but two are common to the south-and they are the black widow, and the Brown Recluse spider. I would like to take a minute to talk about them.

The Brown Recluse Spider