Please stop killing spiders. I get it. I'm scared of spiders too. When I was little, maybe

seven or eight, I was getting ready for bed, I looked down, and saw a large spider crawling

up my PJs. The inside of my PJs. I screamed, I panicked, I cried, and I've pretty much

had that reaction ever since to any encounter with a spider. Finally, after a near miss with

orb weaver spider in my garage while taking out the recycling, I decided that I had to do something

about this. I mean, I was a grown-ass man with a house. I couldn't be calling my dad in tears to

come over at 10 pm because of spider we built a web between my trash can and my car, and I wasn't

sure how I was going to get to work the next day if it wasn't removed. I allowed a large spider to

move in at the base of the steps leading into my garage. She built a thick, messy web like a

gauze sheet and hit herself underneath it. I had to step over every time I wanted to get into my car.

In time, another of her kind joined her, another until I had a line of three centuries at the door of

my house. Like the theories, except these were skittish ambush predators waiting for prey to come to

them and hiding whenever I walked past. Initially, I sort of hopped through their doorway, trying to put

as much distance between us whenever I stepped over. Gradually, I grew used to their presence and

eventually stopped paying attention to them and all. Not much better about spiders now.

I've held the smaller ones. I've been let a larger jumping spider crawl across my fingers

that I pressed against the ground and its path. I didn't have to call my daddy kill spiders in the

house for me. That's what I saw, however. I'm not going to kill them at all anymore.

While I was trying to overcome my fear of spiders, a friend tried to help by sending these stories.

How spiders were the first weaver isn't. Most memorably, a Cherokee story about a grandmother's spider.

Wraped up the sun in her web and brought it to the earth so that we might all have light.

The spiders weren't something to be feared. She said they were our helpers.

...