Life

Bite to reply: Speaking out on behalf of spiders

Anne Hailes

Anne Hailes

Anne is Northern Ireland's first lady of journalism, having worked in the media since she joined Ulster Television when she was 17. Her columns have been entertaining and informing Irish News readers for 25 years.

In my defence, I hadn’t killed a spider before...
In my defence, I hadn’t killed a spider before... In my defence, I hadn’t killed a spider before...

SPIDERS are certainly making the headlines – even BBC Five Live have had features guessing why so many women, and men, don’t like these big brutes. Nicky Campbell had a fit of the giggles when someone suggest Freud had the answer, he Googled it on air but wouldn’t explain. I’m not surprised.

After my experience with a huge spider in the bathroom and my resulting fall, Jim Panzee sent me this email:

"Certain large house spiders are indeed capable of breaking the skin with a bite and causing damage to a human, albeit minimal. In that respect they are harmful (much less so than a bee sting or a cat scratch but technically harmful) but this is not news.

"They haven't suddenly evolved necrotising venom, the ability to brandish a firearm or a psychopathic and genocidal disdain for humanity. They aren't 'out to get us' as your fear-mongering article would infer. If you fear them, like you clearly do, judging by your unfortunate shower story, then educate yourself on the subject rather than blindly bugling your anti-arachnid hate speech from the metaphorical roof tops.

"All this article serves to do is instil a mindless fear of something that should not be feared, and in doing so, endangers these gentle, timid creatures as a nation stricken by irrational hatred holds their slippers aloft to the now threadbare cobwebs.

"'Death to the eight-legged murderers of smooth skin integrity, that have coincidentally been here all along, and never caused me any harm, but its been printed in a newspaper so something must have changed!'

"I hope this email finds you well and you haven't been accosted by a gang of spiders in hoodies, brandishing flick-knives and verbally assaulting you while you walk to the shops to renew your subscription to 'Spider Holocaust Manifesto Monthly'. Disgusting article.

"The Irish News should know better than to print this red-top-worthy, reactionary trash."

In my defence, I hadn’t killed a spider before and most of them wander uninhibited throughout the house – welcome, in fact. However, I have a pint glass for the specific purpose of trapping the big ones before releasing them into the garden, but this particular ‘gentle timid creature’ that jumped out from behind the taps wasn’t going anywhere.

As I mentioned, having checked it out, I can confirm that a spider bite is not pleasant, so shake out your bed clothes, look under your pillow, check your clothes, rattle your saucepans and keep an eye out for these creatures, which, when they skuttle, move at alarming speeds and despite what Jim says, can be extremely scary.

Obviously Jim is one of the lucky ones who can cope with an unexpected confrontation! Do we freak our children out with the nursery rhyme ‘Itsy Bitsy Spider’? After all, who likes to be roughly tickled under the arm by a pretend spider?

According to the pharmacist, if bitten by a spider, or an ant, as I’ve been – talk about 'the biter bit', I think the spider colony sent out a message to the ants to get that woman, or was it you Jim? – take antihistamine and apply hydrocortisone cream and it there’s no improvement, see a doctor.

I’ve been given a few tips on keeping spiders out of the house; chestnuts, or conkers as we call them, are supposed to be a repellent and I have tried this in the bedroom with success, so begin gathering.

Some people leave it to their cats, and most people know that leaving foodstuffs around uncovered will attract flies – and spiders just love flies. Also there are gadgets that hoover up spiders and they can then be released outside unharmed.

THE ISOLATION OF LOSS

THEY say there are only two sureties in life – death and taxes. Taxes are irritating but death is traumatic in every case. No matter what the situation, those left behind will mourn the passing.

Grief comes in many shapes and forms and has to worked through, that might take a long time as it has done with a woman I talked to this week. It’s been almost 15 years since she lost her husband to cancer; theirs was a idyllic love affair and marriage and his death left her devastated.

She went through all the stages of grief, bargaining with God to take the cancer away, angry when He didn’t, making promises to Him if He would change the diagnosis she would go to church every Sunday for the rest of her life: “Perhaps irrational when I look back on it now but I was willing to try everything. Indeed, for a long time I just pretended it wasn’t happening.”

I asked her from where she got her support. “Family mostly, and friends but even then, after his death, I was totally alone, totally isolated.”

I will be telling her story next week, what people said to her by way of comfort but actually upset her more, people crossing to the other side of the road to avoid speaking to her, wondering who was her next of kin.

“I got cards and letters of sympathy and I read them as they arrived but I wasn’t absorbing what was going on. It was two years before I could take that box out of the wardrobe and re-read them and that was a comfort because friends used his name, talked about his life, didn’t use flippant phrases. No-one knows what it’s like until it happens to them.”

What to say or what to write in a card – both are difficult and can be awkward but the worst thing is to do nothing. I know of one man who, years after his friend's wife died, still regrets he didn’t write.

“It’s never too late. I appreciated letters long after my husband died. Time doesn’t matter, you know, just to know someone is thinking about you is very special.”