One afternoon, when my son was little, whilst watering the garden I suddenly hear him shouting ’Spider! Spider!’ This fact didn’t grab too much of my attention as he used to get very excited about spiders in general.
I went over to see what he was looking at and, certainly, though not a tarantula type of spider, this one was slightly larger and more solid than most spider.
As this spider spotted me coming over, with a water hose in my hand, it made certain I knew she meant business.
She turned around to show her stomach to me and sure enough, it had that red mark on it.
In all my years of living in Southern California, this was actually the very first time I was standing right in front of a real live specimen of a black widow spider.
Yeah, I froze – of course I’ve heard all the scary stories! (of how a small spider can kill a full grown healthy man – which is mainly a myth).
My thought went immediately to my son, who at the time was quite little. The thought pertained content such as he could have quite easily been bitten – and just as well he made a bit deal about spiders.
My next move was to, as the spider had predicted, to go after it. Now, this spider was mega fast and disappeared out of sight rapidly.
Then the questions started so surface. Such as, was she really that scary as everyone said they are?
And if so, why had my little son been left alone?
Now nature has a very awesome built in system where, as in this case, that red mark is to tell its environment she’s not just any auld spider (as does the yellow slugs).
Still.
In truth, poison or not, those spiders are quite small and when in plain sight, quite harmless for a full grown human being.
In nature, even the most dangerous of animals will commonly not attack unless provoked. They’ll only go after other animals (here, homo sapiens) if they feel there’s a need for it, i.e. if they feel immediately threatened or, for larger animals, if they are hungry.
It’s us human beings that tend to find fear in memories of the past, in stories told by others, in the thinking of ‘what if’ that most of the time Never actually occurs.
Another note is that I bet you that spider did Not tip around the corner, thinking ‘woo, that was close!!’ and ran to tell all her friends what had just happened. I bet you she went on with her business the millisecond it was over.
The lesson I learnt from what happened? We still have much to learn from nature and this is just one more on how our irrational thinking can cause more problems than benefit if we direct our powerful mind towards issues rather than solutions.
When we feel threatened by our immediate environment, how rational is that fear really?
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