Arachtober: Barn Spiders

Barn Orbweaver (Araneus cavaticus)

This post is for Brian of Brian's Home and others (there are many of you), who may not be able to read it because of a fear of spiders. A fear of spiders is natural; it may be genetically coded into humans, along with fears of fire, drowning, and other things that threatened early humans. But I have to tell my story of my own fear of spiders and how it worked out.

One summer a few decades ago, I was bit by a mosquito on my inner wrist during a stargazing event in a huge field. It quickly became infected. The infection was bizarre: the skin turned pure black and bubbly and the black area grew and grew. The itching was tremendous. The first doctor said it was poison ivy, which I knew it wasn't, and treatments did not work. So I was sent to a specialist, who said it was a spider bite, which I knew it wasn't. It had to be debrided (the dead skin pulled off with forceps, leaving a huge raw area on my arm). It took many weeks, but eventually the infection was vanquished.  I still have a very large, ugly scar on my arm.

Barn Orbweaver (Araneus cavaticus)

Even though I knew I had not had a spider bite, I developed a phobia of spiders. The infection, I have since learned, was most likely MSRA, a bad staph infection, which is often confused with spider bites. Spider bites are extremely rare (they want nothing to do with humans), especially here in the north. Vermont has no native spiders that bite people. You can read The Global Spread of Misinformation about Spiders for information about spider bite reporting.

I moved into my Vermont farmhouse. Barn spiders are prolific here. They are huge and hairy and everyone's nightmare of spiders. They would dangle down in the garage and barn and once one hit me on the head! They love to live under the gutters outside around the entire house. I couldn't kill them, which I wanted to do despite knowing how valuable they are, because they were too big and juicy.

Barn Orbweaver (Araneus cavaticus)

But I had a camera and tried to get as close as possible to them for photographs. Once, I did, an entire new world opened up for me, and my fascination with arthropods began. In fact, the fascination has only grown to the point that even though I know so little, people ask me what bug they saw, I have been published, and I have even won awards. 

Now I watch my step around spiders. Barn spiders never show up inside the house, so there is no stress about that. I still have a slight fear of them, no more panic, but it doesn't overwhelm me like it did. Unless they land in my head; then I go nuts. 

Barn Orbweaver (Araneus cavaticus)

Charlotte, of Charlotte's Web, is a barn spider. Charlotte's last name, Cavatica, is a variation of the species name cavaticus. Her middle name is Aranea; which is a variation of Araneae, the order in which barn spiders are.  I urge you to read, or listen, to this beautiful post from the University of Houston program Engines of Our Ingenuity about Charlotte. E. B. White, one of our most valuable American authors and scholars, either knowingly or unknowingly, used a well-known strategy to protect animals: anthropomorphization. He gave Charlotte human traits so that we sympathize with her and care about her.

Barn spiders are orb weavers: they eat their web every day and rebuild another one every night. They live in wooden buildings and in rafters (thus they are called barn spiders). They are nocturnal. Barn spiders are a North American spider and are most prevalent in New England and Canada.

This post will not resolve anyone's fear of spiders. Hopefully, it will give a bit more knowledge so that we capture and then release any spiders in our homes or cars. It happened with my kids at school, who even taught their families how to interact with spiders. I have two more species of spiders for Arachtober. They are not as scary as this one. One is beautiful and one is cute as a button.

Saturday's Critters at
Viewing Nature with Eileen

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