A-Hunting We Will Go: The Great Spider Hunt

I have been terrified of spiders since I was very young. In fact when I was little, if I found a spider I would run from the room and find someone else to kill it before I would venture into that room again. Gradually my fear lessened, and by the time I was in college I could kill some small spiders myself – but only after staring at them in frozen terror for some time with a shoe in my hand poised for the kill. So I’m happy to say that in the last five months I have (mostly) faced and overcome my fear of spiders. Here’s how it happened:

With its beautiful tropical climate, Kerala is home to the Huntsman Spider, a variety of large, though relatively harmless, spiders. (I couldn’t bring myself to post a picture of one here, but you can see it by going to this web address: http://www.westaust.net/wildlife/huntsman_spider.jpg) These beasties are usually about the size of a closed fist . I know that there are bigger, scarier, and more dangerous spiders in the world, tarantulas and black widows for example. However, having grown up in a place where the freezing winters keep anything larger than a wolf spider away, I viewed these spiders as both huge and terrifying. The first time I saw one in my room here I went into a frozen oh-my-God-that’s-a-giant-spider panic and simply stared at it from the other side of my room. It took me about half an hour to work up the courage to get near it and finally chase it out the window with a broom. Since that first sighting though, I’ve become less frightened. I think my fear has abated somewhat because I know that no one else will kill these spiders for me, and I don’t want to go to sleep at night knowing that the spider I couldn’t kill is hanging out in my room with me. So I learned to kill the giant spiders, thereby keeping my room safe from mysterious giant web-weavers.

During the last week of January one of these giant spiders evaded me. It moved into my bathroom, and refused to be killed. I chased it maybe half a dozen times, but it always escaped into a crevice or pipe where I couldn’t reach it. But I knew it hadn’t moved out of my bathroom because it would turn up in the most unfortunate places. Once I caught it hiding behind the bucket I use to shower, and another time (horror of horrors) it was sitting inside the toilet bowl after I had flushed, fulfilling every child’s fear that there is a monster living in the toilet.

On the afternoon of February 1st this persistent spider finally crossed the line. As I flushed the toilet in my bathroom the giant spider leaped out of the toilet bowl at me, and despite my recently lessened fear of spiders, I screamed. In all fairness, I can’t blame it for trying to avoid death by drowning by leaping out of the flushing toilet. If I were the spider, I would have done the same. But it was the last straw. The Great Spider Hunt had begun. For the rest of the day I stalked this spider. I came back to my room at random moments trying to catch it in a vulnerable position on the floor or walls of the bathroom. I finally did catch it that evening, and I’m happy to say that it will not be haunting my bathroom or jumping out of my toilet anymore.

There are many different (and sometimes uncomfortable) things about my life in India that I have accepted fairly easily: Washing my clothes by hand in the sink; showering with a bucket of cold water; having very little control over my diet; substituting water for toilet paper; living with lizards. I needed time at first to adjust to these changes in my lifestyle, but after a short time I easily grew accustom to them. However, I refuse to share my room with giant spiders. Certainly, I will not share my toilet with them.


(More January updates coming soon!)