Spiders, Man!
06/01/2005
(This article forms part of the Journal that I am writing to describe my impressions of America since arrival in September, 2004. To begin reading this Journal from the beginning, click here.)

Before Kathy came to England, I was rash enough to tell her that there were virtually no creepy-crawlies there. It was only when she arrived and we eventually moved into a converted barn that I realized that I may have exaggerated a little. The place had a fair quota of house spiders.

To me, these hardly counted since the British house spider is totally harmless and performs a useful service in devouring any insects that manage to survive the cool climate. But Kathy was having none of it; she detests spiders and deals with insects herself. I pointed out that these house spiders were so small as not to be worth worrying about. She proved me wrong by finding some large specimens. The fact that their size was merely a matter of legs and the bodies were tiny did not seem to matter; the spiders had to be eradicated.

So I became a spider assassin, much against my inclination. There are some spiders that I can see the sense in waging war against. I defy anyone to sleep soundly in a room that they know they share with an African wolf spider, for instance. Now, that is a real spider.

Of course, it was my experience of African spiders that led me to overlook spiders in England. When you are used to dealing with spiders that can chase a grown man up on to the furniture, it becomes almost impossible to see British spiders as anything more than mobile spots on the wall. There are plenty of spiders in Africa that can give one a nasty bite; some can kill.

The most famous of these deadly spiders is, paradoxically, a small one - the button spider. Everyone in Southern Africa has heard of this little fellow although very few have seen one. And my family had heard tales of it before we moved from Cape Town to Zimbabwe. I know this because of an incident I recall quite vividly, even though I was only eleven years old at the time.

We had crossed the border at Beitbridge and were driving through the long miles of hot and dry lowveld when I noticed a small spider wandering around on my shirt. The fact that it was small gave me instant reason to panic and I yelled that I had a button spider on me. My father stopped the car and dragged me out immediately. The spider was nowhere to be seen by then but I was made to disrobe down to my underpants so that each item of clothing could be carefully inspected and shaken out. I am only glad that no cars passed on that desolate highway and so my embarrassment went largely unseen. And we never did find the spider.

In the years that followed, we learned to live with the ever-present insect and arachnid life of Africa. Most were harmless anyway and the nasty ones, like the malarial mosquito and the tsetse fly, had largely been eradicated from the high plateau of Zimbabwe. So we became inured to their presence, only noticing when something unusually large or colorful made an appearance in our houses.

There were some spiders one could not ignore. The African tarantula, known locally as the baboon spider, is far too big and hairy to share lodgings with. Although neither aggressive nor deadly, its looks were sufficient to ensure we killed them on those rare occasions when they entered the house. We defended this attitude with the fact that they were capable of giving a terrible bite - but the reality was that any spider as big as your hand and as furry as a cuddly toy is not an uncaged household companion anyone would desire.

The wolf spider, however, deserved everything it received in the way of cold welcomes in our houses. I shall not forget my first encounter with one. It was evening and I was alone, watching the television. My eye caught a movement on the other side of the room and, turning for a better look, I realized that there was a large spider on the carpet. As I might have mentioned, large spiders are the norm in Africa so it was with only passing interest that I rose with the intention of getting a closer look.

I need not have bothered. As soon as I moved, the spider came running across the carpet, straight at me. Now, that is not the usual behavior one expects from a spider and I don't mind admitting it gave me a scare. I removed my feet from the floor by the simple expedient of leaping back into the chair. The spider stopped just in front of the chair and glowered up at me. I could now see that it was as large as a baboon spider but more streamlined, being longer and not as hairy. And it also appeared to have not even a nodding acquaintance with fear.

For a few minutes we regarded each other. I was wondering how I could obtain a suitable implement with which to defend myself; the spider, however, was considering how best to go about making me its next meal. For that is how these wolf spiders think. Their vision picks up movement and, in their opinion, anything that moves is fair game. And they have the speed and bite to make good their assumption.

I solved the problem in the end by leaping off the side of the chair and running for the kitchen. Once there, I seized a broom as being the longest-handled weapon available and went back to do battle. It was a battle, too. Wolf spiders fight to the end and their speed and agility makes them very hard to hit, especially when you are taking care that it does not have a clear run at your legs. But I won eventually, crunching the thing into the carpet to make sure that it was dead. The resultant mess took a fair bit of cleaning up (once again with the longest-handled tools I could find) but it was worth it to be rid of that baleful stare.

There is another spider that I remember but have no idea what its name is. This is another large one that makes its home in the dense bushes and trees that line the rivers of Zimbabwe. They are shiny, striped in yellow and black, and string their sticky, yellow nets across any gap in the foliage where prey might be expected to come. Many is the time that I have blundered into these webs and reversed hastily, flailing at the ghastly stickiness and clinging strands. I did not wait around to find out if the spiders were capable of poisonous bites but, judging from their warning colors, I would guess that they are.

So don't tell me Britain has spiders. There may be a few poor eight-legged residents but they are gentle, law abiding creatures in comparison with the monsters I have faced.

North America has a few real spiders, I'm told. I have not seen any as yet but that may well be a result of it being winter. Presumably they will emerge as the weather warms up.

There is the interestingly-named brown recluse, for instance. This has a fearsome reputation but some research on the net has revealed it to be less dangerous than I had been led to believe. Apparently, other spiders are often mistaken for it and receive an unjustly brutal reception as a result. The real thing can give the customary nasty bite but it is not generally fatal. And it is rarely seen, being a shy creature that prefers to remain out of sight, just as one would expect from its name.

There is the black widow spider as well, of course. Every continent seems to have one of these, with the possible exception of Australia where the spiders are so lethal that, most likely, they have eaten anything as small as a black widow long ago. And, now that I come to think of it, the button spider of Southern Africa is very similar to the black widow and is probably just a variation on that theme. I have no doubt that black widows in America are as rare as button spiders in Africa, anyway.

Perhaps I will have to turn to snake stories in future for the rattler would make a fair challenge to some of the African species I have dealt with. And that could lead to a discussion of snake men! Now there's a breed apart...

(to go directly to the next entry in the Journal, click here)

Clive

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