I moved into a new place recently, a ground floor room with a door directly to the garden, a wooden floor coated with dust, and a metal spoon inexplicably lodged under the leg of the chest of drawers. It's embarrassing to admit as a biologist and a fully grown adult, but my first thought was "oh no, are there going to be spiders?"
I don't remember when my fear of giant house spiders first developed, but I remember one particular spider from when I was already afraid. I was probably like fourteen years old, coming back from a family holiday in late summer -- peak spider season. I re-entered the kitchen tentatively. On the floor was a tennis ball, and perched on the ball was a giant house spider, its legs perfectly spanning the entire ball. Next to this spider-ball was the crumpled body of another, smaller house spider. We decided that this was a rival that had been brutally dispatched. At the time I didn't know how to determine the sex of giant house spiders, nor how to tell dead spiders apart from moulted carapaces, so I can't tell you whether that's what had really happened. What I can tell you is what happened next: one of us threw another tennis ball at the spider-ball, bouncing the spider several centimetres into the air like an eight-legged frisbee. This was all captured on video, and we gathered round to watch it over and over with grim fascination while my dad caught the now very peturbed spider and carried it outside.
I don't know how the fear got there, but I've been making some progress getting rid of it. First, I decided that jumping spiders were cute, which was not hard. Then, I made peace with Pholcidae, the creepy but flimsy cellar spiders that walk like they've forgotten how their legs work, and are easy to trap with a cup when they aren't just chilling safely in the corner of the room. I used to check every corner if I went into an outdoor public bathroom, but now I can even scoop them up with my bare hands if necessary. I perfected this technique when I got really into playing squash, and I had to keep rescuing Pholcidae from the court lest they met with another bouncy collision.
So it feels kind of mean, and maybe a bit spider racist, to say that I still absolutely fucking hated being anywhere near spiders of the Eratigena family. It's definitely not just me, every autumn all the tabloids run scare stories about Giant House Spiders "Invading" British Homes2, but still. I like to think that I'm a chill and reasonable person! I don't flinch when a wasp flies in front of my face or lands on my sandwich, and I've rescued two consecutive hornets from my friend's room before1. Being scared of a little spider, even a big little spider, is honestly embarrassing.
A few things had started to chip away at this fear a little bit. My internet friend Jack regularly posted photos of giant house spiders being handled, which convinced me that when they weren't running across my floor, they were very docile and actually looked quite sweet. I also learned more about spider life cycles and behaviour, which made them feel less like ominous house demons and more like just another animal. I learned how to tell the difference between males and females3, which gave me something to focus on when I saw a spider other than its distance from me. I also learned a little about what it's like to be a spider from a sensory point of view. People who are afraid of spiders often assume that a spider in the room is watching them, but did you know that most species can't see very well at all?
The tipping point was a spider that crawled across the floor of my bedroom in my parent's house, about a year ago. It was a pretty large giant house spider, and it was pretty late at night, so I decided to capture it for fear of losing sleep. It saw me approaching with a cup and it bolted, sprinting behind my bed. For the first time, I fully understood that this wasn't sinister -- it was afraid of me, and it was hiding. I seriously contemplated leaving the spider there and going to sleep. Then, I imagined every possible scenario involving the spider crawling, accidentally, across my sleeping body. The spider had to be evicted. It was already 1am and my bed had a pretty hefty wooden frame, but I carefully dragged it outwards, trying to create just a few extra centimetres so that I could fit the cup down the crack. The spider tried to escape, but I blocked off all the exits with hardback books. I went for it with the cup, but it cowered close to the wall, and as the cup went down it squashed a couple of the spider's legs. The spider was right to have hidden from me.
I slid some paper underneath the cup and moved it out in the open, hoping with all my heart that it would pick itself up again. Instead, slowly, the spider curled up. I knew that this is called a death curl - when the spider's body gets damaged and loses so much blood that it is beyond repair. Poor thing. I read a poem about killing a spider and I teared up. I would not chase a hiding spider again, no matter how much sleep it cost me.
So when I moved into my ground floor room, I was still afraid, but I was ready to extend an olive branch. One day, I forgot the risks, and started sewing a big project on the floor. Sure enough, a medium sized giant house spider ran out from under that chest of drawers with the spoon under it, and it dived straight into the pile of almost exactly spider-coloured polyester fluff that I had created. I jumped and retreated to the bed as quickly as possible, but when the spider finally crawled back to its home again, it honestly looked kind of cute. Thus began my tenancy with my new roommate.
He is a male, light brown, with a legspan of about six centimetres long. He often makes the rounds on the floor, hiding under each bit of furniture in turn, sprinting between them like his life depends on it. I haven't named him -- that's the first question my friends ask me when I bring him up. My supervisor says that she doesn't allow her students to name the birds that we study, as it anthropomorphises them.4 I won't die on the anti-anthropomorphism hill myself, as I'm always trying to guess what my roommate is thinking and feeling in human terms, but I feel that it's not my place to name him -- he has his own life.
I promised to myself that I would leave my roommate be, but the first time he ran behind the desk and dashed under my bed, I was still a tiny bit on edge. I managed to sleep, but I started keeping a large clear plastic box on my desk, you know, in case of emergencies. The second time he ran behind the desk, I was ready. I placed the box on its side between the desk and the bed, blocking his path. A few seconds later, sure enough, he tentatively emerged into the box. I'm anthropomorphising him a lot now, but he looked pretty confused by the whole situation. If I wanted to trap him, I only had to move the box to the side and slam it into the wall, but I wasn't sure whether I could do that without injuring him. I held my breath, but I didn't move. He crawled back the way he had came and then up into the underside of the desk, arguably an even more stressful place for him to be than under the bed.
After that, I didn't feel the need to trap him again. He tended to come out at the same time each evening, and I enjoyed trying to spot him each day when I came home. I saw him climbing up the walls a few times, and at one point a different, much smaller house spider appeared on my bed. The combination of these two events brought all those spider crawling on sleeping body scenarious to mind, but I decided to be chill about it. Eventually, inevitably, I turned the lights on in bed to see him sitting on top of my blanket. I jumped out of bed and shook the blanket off onto the floor, where he landed with an audible bump and ran away sheepishly. The worst case scenario had happened and I wasn't even that bothered; his behaviour was just so cute.
For the last two days or so, I hadn't seen him. I didn't think much of it - he's got much better at avoiding me -- but today I took some old packaging down from my shelves to found him curled up on the side of the plastic. Oh, no, was he dead? I nudged him gently with a pen, and half of his body moved, but the other half just stretched out - three of his right feet were stuck to the adhesive. My heart broke. Still hesitant to touch him with my hands, I slid the pen under his body and tried to pull the stuck legs outwards. One foot peeled away, but the other two just stretched out in what looked like a painful manner, and as he clung to the pen for balance I feared that this technique might nudge his other legs into the glue. I had to touch him, but even though I felt such a strong tenderness at seeing my roommate so vulnerable, the idea of him clinging to my fingers still felt a little unsettling. I had a horrible thought -- "if his legs won't come off the glue, I could amputate them with scissors" -- anything other than that was worth a try. With my flatmate watching (for moral support, you know?), I held the pen in my left hand, letting him cling around the pen so that his body was kept away from my hands. Then, with my other hand, I peeled the last two legs off the glue. The last barrier I had arbitrarily put up between me and these gentle creatures was broken.
My flatmate limped sadly away with three broken feet, and I wondered whether I could have done less damage if I was brave from the start instead of trying to use the pen. I consoled myself with the knowledge that spiders can regrow legs after a moult. But I was still very concerned for his wellbeing, so I did some searches to try to find out what his prognosis was. I was wrong about the regrowing legs thing - once giant house spider males are mature, they never moult again, so those legs are damaged for good. Spiders can self-amputate their legs if necessary, so I guess my roommate might be able to make himself more comfortable, but I couldn't find any more specific information on how likely this was to happen for this species.
I also found out that he is close to the end of his life. Eratigena males are born in April, they mature in the summer of their second year of life and they die the following winter, at eighteen months old. My roommate must be around sixteen months old. I saw him again this evening right next to the door to the outside, and I wondered if he was after some water. I splashed some drops down there just in case, but he didn't go for them. I closed the curtain around him to give him some space, so he wouldn't try to run away on his broken feet. I am moving out again soon and I was concerned about finding a flatmate who would not kill him, but winter is coming soon, so that won't be a concern for much longer.
For now, my roommate is still alive and licking his wounds, but that's the end of my story. If you don't like spiders, I hope this helps you to see them in a new light, and if you already like spiders, please email me your own spider stories. You might also enjoy this piece about the same species in the New Yorker.
Also, this is my first post on this blog! If you're reading this and I don't already know who you are, please tell me how you found it, I'm very curious.
Until next time,
~MZW
1 The hornets were circling the light, so I turned the lights off. After a few seconds of darkness, the buzzing stopped at a random point in the room, either on the floor or on some furniture. I turned the lights on, locked onto the hornet, and tried to cup it in the three seconds before it flew back into the light. It took a few attempts to get both of them. I'm kind of proud of that one.
2 Here's a relatively nice example: https://www.corkbeo.ie/culture/family-kids/giant-spiders-invading-homes-dont-18929385
3 Males have pedipalps on the front: that's right, they're not fangs, they're dicks!
4 Not that any of us students are particularly obedient.