Irrational Fear of Spiders

This is perfect for any girl who needs to justify that spiders are something to be afraid of!
I took this from a book called Love Struck by Melanie La'Brooy, credit goes to her...

CHAPTER TWO- Harriet, Audie & Barry the Saint Bernard


It was during my first week in the flat that I discovered one of the greatest drawbacks of a long-distance relationship. I have an irrational fear of spiders that is physical, psychological, pathological and permanent. This fear extends to photographic reproductions in National Geographic and plastic versions commonly found in show-bags. It is therefore unfortunate that I live in a country that has a serious investment in the ugly spider market. There is absolutely no point in telling me that huntsman spiders can't hurt me, that they wont bite and aren't poisonous. Well-meaning idiots who helpfully point out these facts completely misunderstand the whole point of an irrational fear. If I suffered from a rational fear I would be afraid of people watching me parallel park, or of men with ill-made hairpieces. Both of which I am afraid of actually but don't inspire the sheer terror in me that spiders do. In my more philosophical moods, I had often reflected how unfortunate it was that things that ought not be found in nature were actually to be found in nature.

My terror was therefore verging on the hysterical when I came home one night, stripped off and stood under the shower, only to look down and see a six-foot black beast with fangs and in bad need of an eight-leg wax perilously close to my left foot. Somehow I managed to leap out of the shower without knocking myself unconscious on the tiled wall and, wrapping a towel around me, I fled out of the bathroom, slamming the door behind me.

It was only when I was safe in the hallway, my heart thumping, that I realised I had left the shower running. The bastard was probably using my shower gel. I stood outside the door of the bathroom and could have sworn I faintly heard the opening bars of 'Little Miss Muffett', sung in a baritone voice, with a slight lisp caused by an upper lip catching on fangs. I shuddered and stepped back, surveying the door, which was all that was standing between me and my nightmare house guest. Our flat had been built in the 1930s and the doors were solid, heavy wood, but I didn't want to take any chances and face the even worse horror of the spider escaping from the confines of the bathroom and of not knowing where it was.

Grabbing some paperbacks from the stacks that were sitting untidily on the floor of the lounge room waiting for a bookcase to come along one day, I jammed the books up against the crack under the door to form a barricade. I felt slightly safer now that I knew the spider would have to chew its way through the collected works of Jeffrey Archer (which ought to be enough to give anyone indigestion), but I still didn't feel completely secure. So I fetched the insect repellent and sprayed a long thick line on the floor outside the bathroom and around the door frame just for good measure. And then, still feeling slightly hysterical from finding myself unpleasantly close to one of the extras from Raiders of the Lost Ark, I did what any sensible girl would do. I telephoned Charlie and started to leave an abusive message on his answering machine explaining why this was his fault and how disappointed I was that he was never there when I needed him.

Halfway through the call, my new flatmate Harriet came home, so I hung up in the middle of my logical explanation as to why the presence of a gigantic prehistoric beast in my bathroom in Sydney was actually Charlie's responsibility.

I didn't know Harriet very well yet but I had already worked out that she was one of those ultra-fit insane types who got up in the middle of the night to go running and when at home was always to be found waterproofing her hiking boots or polishing her skis. She was the sort of practical, sporty girl who would have been captain of the hockey team at school and who would have bellowed loudly at me to try harder while I was drowning in everybody's wake during swimming carnivals. She also had a terrifyingly grown-up job that I didn't quite understand, but that involved the word 'consultant'.

Harriet took one look at my face and asked, 'Are you okay!'
I was so happy to see her that I almost threw my arms around her. 'I got into the shower when I came home,' I said, bursting with eagerness to share the horror with someone else.
I paused for the dramatic effect.
'And there was a spider in the shower.'
Somehow Harriet didn't seem to quite grasp the full Alfred Hitchcock Psycho shower-scene terror that I had just experienced.
'It's a huntsman,' I added lamely. Still no reaction. She even looked vaguely disinterested.
'They don't spin webs,' I said, in a louder, slightly more hysterical tone of voice. 'The reason they don't spin webs in because they're so big they can chase and kill whatever they want to eat.'
I felt like reciting the well-documented scientific fact about the huntsman spider that got sucked up the vacuum cleaner, only to reappear three weeks later at which time the three youngest children and the family cat mysteriously disappeared, but Harriet still wasn't looking very sympathetic. I inwardly resolved that if she suggested catching the spider in a jar and releasing it in the garden, I was going to punch her extremely hard in her Buddhist/All Creatures Great and Small nose before I moved out.
'Oh,' said Harriet, with what I considered to be an extremely inadequate response. 'I think there's some insect spray under the sink.'

There was a silence as I sought the words to explain to her that for me to use inspect spray on something other than a closed door would involve me a) being in the same room as the spider and b) actually looking it. Reasons c) through to z) were the undeniable fact that in the likely event I actually did anything to aggravate the beast, then it would justifiably start chasing me in order to suck my brains out through my nose. Furthermore, just the thought of knowingly being in the same room as the spider was extremely likely to result in the rupture of my internal organs due to the onset of an hysterical screaming fit. However, we had only known each other for four days and I wasn't sure how she would react to the revelation of this minor personal idiosyncrasy.

Luckily I wasn't forced to explain, as at that moment Harriet spotted the can of insect spray on the coffee table. Her gaze travelled to the hallway and to the bathroom door where a white line of sticky spray was visible on the carpet and around the dark wood of the door frame.
'I was scared it was going to come from under the door,' I explained unnecessarily.

Without moving, she eyed my brave revolutionary barricade of bad airport novels that now appeared somewhat silly and forlorn.
And then she heard the sound of the shower running. She turned to look at me quizzically and tried to feign a nonchalance that didn't sit well with my wet hair and towelled attire.
'It's a really big, dirty spider.'

Without another word, she grabbed the can of spray, removed the barricade and marched into the bathroom. My admiration for her bravery knew no bounds when I heard her turn the shower taps off before she gave Fang-face the death spray. Within a minute the world had miraculously righted itself. Harriet scooped up the crumpled remains with a dustpan and brush and deposited them into the kitchen bin.

'I really hate spiders,' I said, from the safety of the window ledge where I had taken refuge, just in case the spider launched a full-scale retaliation and came out with extra rounds of ugliness. I eyed the bin suspiciously.

Harriet got the hint and without me having to ask she took the bag containing the remains and marched the three flights downstairs and unceremoniously threw it in the bin.

By the time she got back I had started to cook dinner for both of us. She was a fabulous flatmate.