One Auckland entomologist (who, ironically, has no difficulty handling a weta or praying mantis) says, “It’s definitely the legs-the way a spider puts them down so softly and deliberately when it walks, as if it’s feeling its way. Some spider-haters attribute their revulsion to the fear of being bitten others mention the spider’s hairiness, the low-slung body, the ability to remain motionless for long periods, then dart out to seize prey. For most of us, it starts with our parents’ reaction to them-or perhaps being teased by siblings or playmates-and is reinforced by nursery rhymes, myths and spiders playing bad-guy roles at the movies-as in the recent film Arachnophobia. While Margaret’s abhorrence of spiders may be extreme, it is not uncommon-among animal phobias, fear of spiders is second only to fear of snakes. She finds that her phobia, which is worst when life is stressful, is best dealt with “using Black Flag-half a can per spider”. Margaret doesn’t know why she’s so afraid of spiders, but she “hates their shape, their legs and the way they scuttle”.
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Her worst nightmare is of being put into a glass tank full of poisonous spiders-a stunt actually performed in a Sydney shopping mall, which she read about in the paper, with horror.
So, whenever she swam laps she turned three feet short of the ends, afraid that if she put her hand up on the tiles a waiting spider would rear up on its hind legs and plunge its fangs into her. She once had a holiday in Sydney where she heard stories about the highly venomous funnel web spider’s habit of living near swimming pools, especially in the guttering around the edges. “I couldn’t live in Australia, and I certainly couldn’t live within a hundred miles of Sydney,” she says. She used the longest extension pipes she could find, and tried to vacuum the rooms without leaving the hallway.
When she and her husband moved into a new house which had been vacant for some time, she had to put on a hat before she could face vacuuming up all the spiders’ webs. Sometimes at night she has to turn on the light with something other than her hand, for fear that a spider could be sitting on the switch, ready to pounce. She can’t bear to look at, let alone touch, a spider-even a photograph of a spider. She is a successful medical practitioner, but she has a problem. Written by David Faulls Photographed by Michael Schneider
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