I Captured a Spider…and Now It’s My Pet

Yes, I’ve finally gone off the deep end.

“Don’t you dare tell your father where we’re going,” I hissed at my five-year old.

I pressed the button to answer my husband’s call via Bluetooth. “Hello?” I said, as if I was up to absolutely nothing.

“MAMA GOT A PET SPIDER AND WE’RE GOING TO THE PET STORE TO GET IT A HOME!” the kindergartener shouted into the air before anyone else could speak.

I shot her a look in the rear-view mirror. She grinned and shrugged.

There was silence on the other end. “Did you hear her?” I asked.

“Oh, yes, I heard her,” he replied. “We are going to have to talk about our adoption of animals,” he admonished.

In my defense, he agreed to the dog and, mostly, to the gerbils. And the birds aren’t really ours, they’re just living under our deck until they leave the nest.

Acquiring my pet spider was a win-win situation.

A half-hour earlier, I’d been visiting a friend’s house with my daughter. The kids went downstairs to play while my friend and I stayed upstairs. As we conversed, she looked over my shoulder and her eyes widened. “What…is…that?!” she said, pointing at some picture frames sitting on a table behind me.

“Oh, it’s a cute little jumper!” I exclaimed. It was cute, but not so little by jumping spider standards — it was about the size of a dime.

“Cute?!” she exclaimed. “Get it out of here!”

Side note: I am not one of those people who profess to love things that others find weird and creepy just for the sake of being different. In the last few years, in fact, I’ve overcome a genuine fear of arachnids and become quite fond of them.

I rushed into her kitchen and found a container in which to put the spider, which I identified as a Phiddipus audax, or a bold jumping spider, and then of course I hit up my favorite Facebook group for some advice as to how to care for it. I learned I could feed it crickets, moths, flies, and other small insects (but not ants), and armed with that information I happily packed up my child and drove her to the pet store where we procured a small plastic terrarium and a dozen or so crickets. Once we were back in the car, I placed one of the crickets into the enclosure for the spider to munch on.

My friend, meanwhile, was relieved that I’d removed the beast from her house and also probably questioning my sanity in equal measure.

Most people won’t tell you if they think you’re nuts.

On the way home, we needed to pick up my other daughter from a play date, and since I didn’t want the spider getting overheated in the car, I just went ahead and brought it in with me.

“Whatcha got there?” the mom asked.

“Jumping spider,” I said casually. “Caught it at the last play date.”

She squirmed a little, but then she managed to pull off being totally cool with it. “Whoa, that’s so awesome,” she said, suppressing a shiver. “What are you going to do with it?”

“Oh, I’m going to keep it. I just got this cage at the pet store.”

This didn’t sound strange to me at all, the idea that one might keep a jumping spider as a pet, but I do realize I must sound like a complete lunatic to most people. My own father, who was my spider assassin growing up, asked me why I had to domesticate the one thing he’s afraid of.

Before I managed to round up my children and get them in the car, I noticed a moth on the curtain in the family’s play room.

“Mind if I take that with me?” I asked the mom.

“No, go for it!” she said. As it happens, one of her daughters enjoys trapping moths in her hands. Thus, I recruited an eight-year-old mercenary to capture and deposit a moth into the terrarium which housed the newly-acquired pet spider of a grown woman.

Nope, not weird at all.

“What do their webs look like?” the child asked.

“Oh, these little guys are hunters,” I explained. “They don’t build webs. They pounce on their prey.”

“Cool!” everyone agreed.

I brought the spider home to the disapproving gaze of my husband, who nodded sardonically as I assured him that, as with the foster gerbils, I would be solely responsible for housing and feeding the spider.

I plopped the enclosure onto the kitchen counter and watched for a bit. My new pet (which I later learned is an adult male) likes to spend time up in the corner of the terrarium, which makes him pretty hard to see, but frequently he comes out to explore.

We can learn a lot from being in close quarters with an arachnid.

I checked on my new friend enthusiastically each time I passed by that evening, to see if the cricket or moth had yet met its maker. No luck; Spidey must not have been hungry yet.

The following day, I arranged the terrarium using the guidelines some friends from Facebook had recommended. The moth flew up to the side wall, and we were in business.

Within minutes, Spidey was stalking. He walked, very deliberately, along the wall until he reached the moth, and then nudged it with one leg.

Oh, sorry, didn’t see you there.

The moth fluttered its wings and flew to another wall. Spidey retreated to his corner in the lid, for a moment. But soon, and before my eyes, that little creature pounced on the moth and, quite literally, ate it for lunch.

I don’t know how long I’ll keep little Spidey, but I cannot understate the value of impartial observation in alleviating fear of the creepy crawlies. As I sit here, watching him play a game of cat and mouse with a cricket, I marvel at the diversity of creatures on this planet. My children watch a spider catch its prey, and instead of being afraid, they are awestruck. Being around virtual spiders for the last several years has conditioned me to seeing real ones as the tiny, complex, harmless creatures they are, and put me in the position of being able to pass along my newfound knowledge to others who suffer the same fear I once held.

The following day, I received a text message from the mom who had so graciously supplied Spidey with his first meal.

Found one of your spiders on our porch window today. Now that I’m a little more informed thanks to you, I didn’t react the way I normally would (with a shoe in one hand, I confess).

And that’s the natural instinct for most of us, isn’t it?

I get it. Evolutionarily, I get it. We need to be able to identify potentially harmful creatures so they don’t kill us. Culturally, I get it. Spiders have long been feared, and the 1980s movie, Arachnophobia, really solidified the horror factor for many — including me. And we pass down the heebie-jeebies to our children.

But we’re in a new era now, and we can study and observe and ask Siri to search the web. We can educate ourselves on the species in our area and make an educated decision about whether or not we want them around. (Spoiler: Spiders do a lot of behind-the-scenes pest control and, though some of us might be freaked out to see them, we do well to have them around.)

You don’t need to develop a love affair with spiders (though, by all means, do it if you want!). But, the next time you see an uninvited guest crawling on your walls, or your picture frames, I hope that rather than acting out of fear and reaching for the nearest shoe, maybe you will grab a cup (or a terrarium) instead.

If you liked this story, you’ll probably like this one as well.

Subscribe to my newsletter to keep in touch. Tweet | Gram | Book