Is fear of spiders a world wide thing? I think so but I wonder why some people are terrified of spiders and others will pick them up and carry them outside. Which are you? 
I am of the latter variety.
This time of year the spiders are spinning their webs everywhere. Overnight they can cover a doorway in their delicate needle work.
My track to the Other Side is lined with reeds and this time of year I have to wave a stick in front of me to break the webs as I walk along. They build these strong webs from one side to the other. And I can hear the little spiders sigh as I pass through and they quickly start all over again in my wake.
I imagine their disgust when all they catch is me in their beautiful knitting. I am endlessly washing webs out of my hair. I don’t mind really but I would rather not go to the supermarket with spiders riding along on the sleeve of my jacket.
Today I am meeting with a man who grows grains of all kinds and mills them into flours. This meeting is part of my search for local pig feeds. When he switches from grinding one grain to another he has a short run of overlap where the grains get mixed. This is unsellable and is considered a byproduct. So I am doing some investigation.
One mans byproduct can become another woman’s pig food. Or at least a component on her pigfeed.
He tells me he has a small pellitiser (sp) that we can experiment with. Today will be interesting.
I hope you have a lovely day.
Love celi
I am having such trouble loading pictures from either my phone or the camera onto WordPress using my computer. I get the photos in there but they take hours to load onto the page. I cannot work out the problem. So I am writing and publishing this post from the WordPress app. It is useful but limited.
The Kitchen's Garden 
99 responses to “ARE YOU AFRAID OF SPIDERS?”
I’m not bothered by either snakes or spiders. Strange thing though, the orb weavers are quite happy spinning their webs from one vehicle to the other over the asphalt paving here or between the posts of the back stairs and porches and not really any plants except down in the alley which is where one would think the spiders would have better catches. I use the pooper scooper handle to remove the webs when I take Smoky out. When I had the house, there was a big picture window on the north side where every fall we’d have at least one orb weaver spinning her web. It was fascinating to sit and watch, the first one was called Hepzibah, the second Mehitable and after my mom passed the spiders never lived there again. As a kid I used to catch and bring home garter snakes they always got taken back to the little prairie on the corner. My oldest step-son thought he’d freak me out by dropping a garter snake into my lap, but I just starting stroking it then lifted it up and put it in the flowerbed. I’ve heard that if you have spiders in your house you don’t have anything really toxic inside.
An environmental engineer who stayed in the Retreat in the spring also told me that having ladybirds in the house is the same . They are very susceptible to sprays.
I don’t mind spiders, and have a chat to the ones who build across my path, telling them they’re welcome, they just have to build away from where I need to walk. Occasionally I have to remind them they’re in my space. And I let the house ones know I’m going to clean their webs away so they scurry to safety. I have a big huntsman who lives behind the toilet, it moves off to safety when I go in and has never bothered me. My house is old with gaps in the floorboards, so easy access for lots of critters. Quite like snakes too, I have 3 living in my roof, big 6 footers, but harmless tree pythons, or night tigers, and at the moment often have to step around them as they sun themselves to warm up, but I don’t usually see them, just find evidence of them with their shed skins hanging everywhere. I give the browns and blacks a wide berth though, they’re poisonous and deadly.
Ok- an enormous spider BEHIND you in the toilet. That would scare me.
Nice to find so many nature-lovers here. I like spiders way better than mosquitoes, so allow their webs to remain as long as possible. I have two huge garden spiders on my back porch so have to work around them to keep from disturbing their webs. I like snakes, too, for keeping rats and mice down, but haven’t seen a poisonous one in years. Don’t know what I would do about a poisonous one.
John wishes we had more snakes – he hates mice. Maybe we should put one in the feed shed
I’m of the ‘live and let live’ frame of mind … stay OUT of my house, and don’t spin webs on my car and we’re good. I would NOT pick them up and carry them outside.
Absolutely fair enough!!
We are kind to all matter of spiders in our house. Any creature, really, except mosquitoes, ants, and certain caterpillars.
I hate ants too – I work to keep them outside.
I have an irrational fear of spiders. Do love the beautiful webs, sunlit and full of dew. They are works of art. I did scoot by your pic, lol. We have what we call the Halloween spider. They are yellow, black and green. Not sure of their real name. They set up business in our gardens. Our grandkids love tossing bugs into their web. They instantly wrap them up. They are a plus to a garden. On the other hand I like snakes, lizards, etc. We live in Rattler country. They actually do good work eating mice and other small pests. Live and let live doesn’t work for them. Rattlers close to the house get dispatched pronto. We always have a flat-edged shovel handy. Snake bite is common here. Back to spiders, I grew up always checking my shoes that have been in the closet for a while. Never know what might have moved in!
I also check my boots and love the image of your grandkids feeding the spiders. That sounds like fun!
I really, really dislike any kind of bugs, anything with more than four legs. My fear comes from a nasty bout of pneumonia when I was in the second grade. I distinctly remember the dreams when I had a very high fever – the blanket on my bed was just crawling with bugs and to this day I cannot abide them. I had a large black & yellow spider living in one end of my raspberry patch one year, I never picked a berry from that end! I like snakes, think they’re cool and rats, lizards, mice, amphibians, etc. don’t bother me at all but keep those bugs away!
That fevered hallucination sounds too awful. Poor you. And just a kid. Aren’t those black and yellow spiders huge!
Heavens ! I also would not mind spiders or snakes if they were not out to kill me . . . well, Kate has touched on the subject. In my time living semi-rurally, but not on a farm, I have known of over half-a-dozen deaths here and the ambulance oft has its sirens on to take yet another desperately affected to hospital. There are ten well-known poisonous spiders around here and some like the redback are so small you may easily miss them. I always have thick gloves on before I go near an outside tap as I have had to kill dozens of them then and there each year . . . and I would not like a funnel web bite . . . . Both redbellied and brown snakes abound here in the season: one tries not put one’s hand into a flower bed or pot without beating the hell out of it with a stick and I always make certain shoes I have not used for a few days are not home to something ready to bite . . . actually the Huntsman is a lovely one of its kind and many of the hugest of the snakes are pussycats, but the common redbellied black or the deadly brown . . . . . so, here Down Under, I do wish they would just all go away . . . 🙂 !
Sounds like the thick gloves and very sensible. Merciful heavens.
I am neither type. I really do not mind spiders in my home. They are not such a problem like they are in other regions. If they really bother me, I might chuck them outside, or just squash them. However, my colleague down south is seriously afraid. You might find this amusing: https://tonytomeo.com/2017/11/11/arachnophobia/
Thank you, Tony!
I don’t mind spiders and don’t even evict them until they get of a size where I can distinguish their face. Then I feel like they had better move on and build their own damn house. Happily for the spiders, my eyesight has been declining of late, so I think they get to be bigger these days than in the old days.
I attribute my tolerance of insects generally to having lived in a basement for 10 years. You just get used to crawly things. But I don’t like noisy ones or the ones that land on my food.
I am with you there! And I don’t like tickly ones – like flies!
I like spiders from afar, although I will on occasion catch one and move it to a safer location. That said, I am also careful, knowing they can be quite dangerous.
Of course I love spiders! 😁 I’ve been away for months, working my way backward now.
I see you working your way through- and yes OF COURSE you like spiders!
Yes I’m one to take them outdoors … I always feel sorry for them when all they seem to catch is me 🙂
In a different house with spindles around the deck it was always lovely in the morning dew to see what the spinning class had been up to.