It's almost Halloween, and across the country spooky ghosts, gruesome monsters and, you guessed it - spiders - are adorning homes and shops everywhere. If you're anything like Times wildlife columnist and author of several wildlife books, Simon Barnes, you're not overly fond of our eight-legged arachnid friends. But, like most nature enthusiasts, Simon can see beyond the spindly legs, to their value in the natural world. What gets you running a mile when it rears its (ugly or otherwise) head?
Simon Barnes: "And yet how wonderful the damn things are."
I love all wild things, but I’m prepared to make an exception of spiders. I’ve stood firm in the face of lions and elephants, I’ve coped with rainforest and I’ve coped with desert, but a spider in the bath gives me the jumps.
So there I was in Zambia, in a hut a good mile from the nearest neighbour, and I was feeling ever so slightly appalled. So appalled, I had to count them. The number will stay with me forever: 47. Ranging in size from about three inches across the diagonal, to twice that. The twice-thatters were in a clear majority. That’s 376 legs. What’s a chap supposed to do? I took a goodish slug from the duty-free, pulled the sheet over my head and slept till morning. The dozen or so that remained by then seemed nothing.
But they’re not as bad as the Kalahari Ferrari. Strictly speaking, these are not spiders, they’re Solifugids. They don’t build webs and wait: they charge about at a million miles an hour on roughly the same track, again and again, and they eat anything they bump into. They can move at 10mph, which is a lot in your living room.
And yet how wonderful the damn things are. As Eskimos are (wrongly) said to have dozens of words for snow, so a spider can make seven different kinds of silk.
I’ve learned how to deal with them. Every time one of the damn things goes past I emit a girlish squeak, make another attempt on the world record for the sitting high-jump and deposit about a tablespoon of cold beer onto my crotch. A few minutes later, we re-enact the same performance.
Try a walk in the woods in the Lam Tsuen Valley in Hongkong. Every pair of trees is linked by a great sticky cartwheel: a spiderweb at least three feet in diameter: one that looks tough enough to snare a small child. At the centre of each, a seriously sizeable black and yellow woodland spider. I have a picture of such a web: it holds its mistress and a half-eaten bat.
Now, fear of spiders is one of the easiest things to cure. So why don’t I do it? Because I am horrified at the idea of being so easy with spiders that I could let them run up my arm. I know it’s absurd, but I’d sooner deal with the perpetual dread that has accompanied me across the wild world.
And yet… And yet how wonderful the damn things are. As Eskimos are (wrongly) said to have dozens of words for snow, so a spider can make seven different kinds of silk. They use the stuff for webs, for infant care, for hunting, for lifelines, for flight and even for love. Their evolutionary path is the silk road: silk is at the core of their being.
Walk up a hill into the sun in the early morning in the warmer months of the year and you will see the world as never before: every two stands of grass linked by silken tightrope made visible by the backlit dewdrops, as if overnight the world had been painted in gold. It’s a poor heart that can't rejoice at such a moment. Even mine can manage it.
Spiders - and just about everything else - are celebrated in Simon's new book Ten Million Aliens: A Journey Through the Entire Animal Kingdom, published by Short Books and available on Amazon.
By Simon Barnes
Twitter: @WildBarnes
I have never been afraid of spiders. I am glad we don't have the poisonous ones in England.
I am the only one in this household who will remove a spider from the house!!
My DD is not afraid of creepy crawlies when they are moving, but when they are dead on the windowsill she freaks out and can't touch them, even with the vacuum cleaner.
I, but, less so, my eldest daughter, think spiders are great 
To the extent that, for over six months, I used to feed the spider that hid behind the panelling in our Victorian house, I gave her - she gave birth after a couple of weeks - titbits of teeny (2 mm cubes) of ham or cheese with some time-passing (time-wasting?), jiggling with a cocktail-stick to mimic a suitably struggling insect... after a couple of days' practice, it appeared to work
Boris, thanks, 'The Who', and I enjoyed many delightful sessions together
Sapph
A few years ago, we were watching a great feature by Hugh Fernley-Whittingstall about how wood-lice are related to crustaceans like shrimps and prawns. When lightly poached or, in the microwave until they turn pink - about 45-60 seconds, they taste the same.
So, in the spirit of culinary experimentation, I said to my daughters,
"You know those old fencing-panels behind the compost-heap?"
"Er...", they know me, and
"No... no, NO!" and,
"NO WAY!"
However, we did and, 170ish freshly-poached woodlice on a slice of bread sprinkled with lemon juice and freshly ground pepper do taste like potted-shrimps and left us, well, me gagging for more
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