Why I'm Not Afraid of Spiders Anymore

Tarantulas, Jane Goodall, and What Humans Keep Forgetting

I used to have an intense fear of spiders. As a kid, every time I found a spider in my room as a child, I would scream for my dad. I wanted him to take care of the situation by smashing the spider. But he inevitably carried the creature outside in what seemed like reckless courage.

When I was about ten, I flipped through a National Geographic magazine filled with close-up pictures of arachnids and felt fear course through me. I remember being slightly fascinated by this visceral reaction to 2D photos.

My fear persisted into adulthood. When my husband and I moved to Texas, we had some *big* spiders in the house (because . . . Texas). I bought a killing spray and would stand five feet away, covering my face and soaking the intruders.

Close Encounter of the 8-Legged Kind

On a hot morning in Texas about ten years ago, I dropped my daughter off at preschool and went on a walk around the block before the temperature became unbearable. On my way back to the car, I saw something on the sidewalk about ten feet in front of me.

A tarantula.

A really big Tarantula right in the middle of the walkway and facing me.

I can’t explain what happened next because I don’t understand it. Rather than turning around and getting out of there, I sat down on the sidewalk, facing her. (I didn’t know the sex of the creature, obviously, but I imagined her almost instantly as a mother spider.)

I sat and I stared at her and she stared at me. Minutes ticked by. Neither of us moved. For the first time in my life, rather than running away from a spider, I looked and looked and looked. Eventually, she turned and walked into the field beside the walkway.

I am no longer afraid of spiders — not from that morning onward. A lifetime of anxiety evaporated in a few minutes on a hot day on a Texas sidewalk.

Like I said, I can’t explain it.

“I’ll Take Care of It”

Last December, one of my favorite poets passed away — Nikki Giovani. I was thinking about her and about one of her poems (see below) when my daughter yelled down for me to come “take care of” a spider in her room.

And I did take care of it. I carefully scooped it up and released it outside.

In losing my fear, I lost the need to destroy the thing that frightened me.

Why Am I Thinking About Spiders Today?

Jane Goodall passed away yesterday. Goodall and Dian Fossey had an outsized effect on my moral imagination as a kid. They got me fascinated in primates — which got me thinking from an early age about humans’ relationship with other creatures who share our world.

As Goodall wrote:

And:

• “Only if we can understand, can we care. Only if we care, will we help. Only if we help, shall all be saved.”

• “The naturalist looks for the wonder of nature—she listens to the voice of nature and learns from nature as she tries to understand it.”

One contemporary writer who is keeping that wonder alive for the next generation of kids is Katherine Rundell. As I’ve written before, her children’s book “Impossible Creatures” is a minor miracle. My son and I are now reading the sequel (“The Poisoned King”) together and also read her “adult” book earlier this year.

About an hour before the shooting at the church in Michigan last week — a shooting that affected a dear childhood friend (she and her family are okay but not okay because it’s all NOT OKAY), I posted this graphic in my Substack newsletter “Beautiful Things for a Sunday morning.”

By the end of the evening, I was stitching up these words as a reminder to myself.

Which is a long way of saying that awe and wonder are more than “nice feelings.” They are a fundamental way of approaching and understanding the world.

If we want a more peaceful planet, we need to remember — to know in our bones — that we all (and not just humans) belong to one another.

Cheers — and g’mar chatima tova to my readers who are observing Yom Kippur,

Deborah