It’s spider season in Tucson. I used to be afraid of spiders. Oh, I don’t like being surprised by a big spider, and it’s a big hell no from me on spiders in Costa Rica or Australia. I mean, look at this picture of two spiders from Costa Rica.

No thank you! I think everybody has fears about some insect or animal. Snakes? No problem. Bees? Meh. Snakes? Not a fan, but I’m not scared, either. Mice and rats? I don’t mind them, unless I see a city rat while walking. Since Lyme, the only insect that scares me is a tick.

I also think a lot of fears are learned when we are children. Either we see a parent react, or we have experiences that shape our fears. My mother was not intimidated or frightened of any insect or animal, as far as I could tell. I had encounters as a child that caused me to be frightened of spiders for years. The first one I remember clearly took place in Corpus Christi. It’s one of my earliest memories, too. There were abandoned cement bunkers from the 40s or 50s on the beach near our house. I’m sure they have either been removed or were destroyed by one hurricane or another. In 1962, however, they were places for us kids to crawl into and imagine what it would be like to be a soldier. The bunker I went into was full of sand drifts, and as I crawled in, I turned to look back at the entrance. Not six inches from my face was a big nest of black widow spiders. Note the “s.” I didn’t know much about spiders, but my brothers made sure to tell me about poisonous black widows with fangs and eight beady eyes.

I will never forget the ragged cobwebs with white blobs (which I learned many years later were egg sacs) and dead insects, nor the large black spiders with the red hourglass on their bellies.

The next time I had a close encounter with a spider was in the swamps near our house in Covington, Louisiana. We had a canoe and I was out with Mom birdwatching. We let the canoe drift under the cypress trees and passed binoculars back and forth, looking for birds. Mom was looking for a prothonotary warbler, a tiny, bright yellow bird. I wasn’t doing much of anything, just watching the sun shine through the moss, when I stuck my oar out to gently push us away from the cypress stumps. I turned to see where I should push us and came face to face with a wolf spider the size of a fist, its’ back wriggling with baby spiders.

I let out a short shriek, and Mom scolded me for scaring the birds. I ask you, if this was a few inches from your face, what would you do? I was NOT squeamish. I regularly swam in the swampy waters of Lake Emfred, where water moccasins could be seen, and gars lurked in the inky deep parts. We also picked leeches off ourselves after swimming, and boys were paid $5 to chase alligators off the golf course. Every place I lived, except for Colorado, had roaches. They’re gross, and there are few things more disconcerting than encountering a large wood roach in the bedroom in the middle of the night.

Over the years of living in Texas, Louisiana, and North Carolina, I grew used to walking on trails with a stick, waving it in front of me at head height so I wouldn’t walk into a spider web, like Kevin did when we were surveying the lot where we built a house back in ’93. The contractor was showing us what he was going to clear and leave on the lot when Kevin, who was in front of me, jumped and began to brush at his chest, cursing a blue streak. I saw the spider before the contractor thumped him once and grinned, wiping spider guts off of his hand onto his pants. “Harmless,” he said, but that sucker was big and brown and yellow and I was not pleased.

I think the experience that cured me was in Australia. Kevin and I were in Melbourne, and we stopped at a seaside park with fabulous views. Lots of people were walking through a tree shaded trail to a cliff to take pictures. We walked through, stood cliffside, took pictures, and watched the sea. It was gorgeous. As we turned to walk back, Kevin took my hand and said, “Don’t look up.”

Yes, I looked up, and I wished I hadn’t. I saw something that looked like this:

Only there were easily forty or fifty webs with spiders everywhere draped between the trees. I froze. On one side was a steep drop into the sea. On the other was the trail through the trees. There were no other options. No one else seemed bothered at all. I think one Aussie said something like, “Oh, Golden Orbs are harmless little critters. No worries with them,” and then told us about the other spiders in Australia.

If that was supposed to comforting, it wasn’t. I had no choice. We dashed down the trail. I was certain that I would feel a spider land on my head or shoulders at any second, but no spiders fell on us. Maybe the act of being forced to confront one of my worst fears did the trick. Psychologists call this “cognitive conditioning,” where one confronts their fears in a safe way until they no longer freak out. I don’t think they would approve of the setting or methodology, but it worked.

Spiders, aside from their looks, are highly beneficial in a home and garden. They eat lots of pesky insects like flies, mosquitos, and roaches. They aerate the soil in gardens. They are a good food source for other animals like birds and lizards.

Ticks, on the other hand, get the faint praise that they are an important link in the food chain by taking nourishment from larger animals and as a source for food for turkeys and other ground birds. After I got Lyme, I had a new fear, one brought on by true classical conditioning (think Pavlov’s dog); I was bitten by a tick and got a serious illness.

Adjusting my attitude towards spiders had a few speed bumps. I sent this video to Katie along with a photo I took of the dried remains of a tarantula.

This was and is one of the most horrifying natural behaviors I’ve seen. Tarantulas are shy and slow-moving, but it is still disconcerting to see one ambling across the yard.

I used to be one of the “Omg I saw a spider in the bathtub, we have to move!” people. Now I’m more likely to help a spider out of the bathtub, like I did today. It was just an ordinary brown house spider, a little bigger than a quarter. Hopefully, he found a nice dark place to hang out and eat up the other insects, including ticks. They have ticks in Tucson, although I haven’t seen one yet. I hope I never do. I’m not up for another cognitive conditioning session yet.