The evil that spiders do

We're hard-wired to despise these monsters for a reason. Now hand me that plunger.

By Steve Burgess

Sep 28, 2000 | I was relaxing with the newspaper on my knees and my pants around my ankles when movement on the bathroom floor made my head swivel. What I saw coming toward me set in motion the usual reflexive reaction -- a full-body spasm accompanied by an involuntary vocalization wrung from my diaphragm like dirty water from a dishrag. For an arachnophobe, just a regular day at the office. But this time was different.

Taking in the size, speed and trajectory of the attacker, my brain scrolled rapidly through the category of "Spiders found in houses and apartments." No match found. As I called up the next category, "Spiders found in Borneo," two alarms became five. I screamed -- twice, I'm afraid -- and jumped into the bathtub. The monster rolled to a stop beneath a little table and sat motionless beside the baseboard. It was the biggest spider I'd ever seen outside of the Discovery Channel.

Scientists do not seem to have phobias figured out. As is the case with dreams and hemorrhoids, the best information is still largely speculation. Freud's hypothesis involved unconscious, suppressed emotions. Agoraphobia, the fear of open spaces, is sometimes linked to early separation anxiety. In the case of specific phobias like mine, some researchers blame learned responses due to early, direct experience (e.g., finding a spider in my ice cream) or coincidental associations (e.g., seeing a spider on the table just as my big brother spits in my ice cream and pokes me in the eye. Fear of older brothers is not learned: It's standard).

Nonphobics don't get it. People are always pointing to my Spider-Man watch. "Aren't you afraid?" they smirk. Well, no. Two legs good, eight legs bad. It's the sinister arachnoid form and its wicked speed that triggers reflexive responses deep in the limbic system of my skittish brain. I know this from personal experience -- once established, a good, solid phobia settles down into regions of gray matter that have nothing to do with higher reasoning. A phobia shares space with the reflexes that lift your hand from a hot burner or make you gag on bad food.

Just outside the laundry room in my apartment building there's a black mildew spot on the ceiling, a little larger than a silver dollar. I know it's there and yet it catches me every time, crawling into the corner of my eye as I come down the hall, causing me to jerk convulsively in a spray of dirty clothes while my neighbors hear an awful sound and wonder if a dying lemur is caught in the dryer.

And that's just for mildew spots. Actual specimens that appear in the bathroom sporting legs like Betty Grable summon up a whole different level of panic. As I stood in the bathtub my ears were buzzing. My internal organs had been hijacked by involuntary controls, my nervous system winging on a megadose of adrenaline. Thus did my body prepare me to do battle with a fragile creature 2 inches long and about as poisonous as an earthworm. It's hard to get the sympathy vote here, I know.

Had I been blessed with a more even temperament I could perhaps domesticate the beast, train it to fetch cans off high shelves or just win a passel of blue ribbons at the fair. But no -- battle had to be joined. If this thing escaped to some hidden lair I would have to douse the apartment with kerosene, give the neighbors a heads-up and drop a match. At the very least, sublet. I could not remain knowing it was at large. "Spiders? They're very beneficial, you know," people always explain to me. "They eat bugs." (Do tell.) "I always capture them and set them free."

Good for you. I always let out a piercing battle shriek and stomp them into greasy spider pbti. Arachnophobia and Buddhism cannot coexist.

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