Spiders are too awesome to kill!

[Spider-Spazz]

Today in class the boys were screaming like girls, all because of a spider on the wall. I got to it before someone stepped on it, and I picked her up which made everyone scream like girls.
I took her outside and let her go though, it looked like some sort of immature house spider.
Smaller then a penny, black with white spots in a row going vertically down her back. I know its not much of a description, but I can't remember much about her or find any pictures of the spider online.

[saltyscissors]

I find it horrible that Arthropods are looked upon with disgust instead of sheer amazement or interest; they're the most beneficial creatures in our ecosystem and without them Humans, along with every other backboned animal on land would eventually die out. Spiders in particular, don't bite, infest, try to bother people or spread disease, and people still kill them. Infact, there are millions of videos people "ganging" up on spiders and killing them, sometimes even catching them in a cup, putting them outside and then stomping them. It makes me sick to my stomach that people would even think of killing anything for fun, full stop. There's a big difference between hobby and mental disorder.

[Harmony67]

I commend you for moving her to a safer location.

I used to work for a woman who paid me to kill all of the spiders on her property on a weekly basis. All I did was shoo them away and take their webs down. She assumed that new spiders moved in and was none the wiser because she "checked" my work when I was done. Thankfully she didn't kill spiders herself, she was too afraid of them to do it.

She did teach her daughters to fear them, so I am sure they will teach their kids and so on and so on.

Hopefully more people learn how wonderful they are...

[pouchedrat]

I agree.. While visiting my father last month (he lives 6 hours away, I see him maybe twice a year if that) he wanted to see photos I had on my facebook of a LARP I attend. Well, he started wandering through my galleries, and found some photos I took of a Steatoda sp. I had found a while back. In a dead-pan, low voice he said "that's a black widow..." I told him no, but it was known as a false black widow. His reply- "That looks like a black widow to me". me- "Well it's not (then rattles on about the differences)".

He then asks in a very serious, scary tone, "have you ever seen a black widow where you live?" me- "yes a small one once". "did you kill it?" "no, it was out in the woods"

His reply to that?? "You have failed your son, and you've failed the children in the area". Because I didn't go on a murderous rampage and wholesale slaughter black widow spiderlings out in the middle of the woods, while I was searching for tree bark. He was getting really threatening and accusing me of putting my son at risk who, by the way, was nowhere near the woods at this time anyway, he was in school.

So basically my love of animals, as he puts it, puts others at risk. *sigh*...

Then again, he did some pretty terrible things in front of me to animals growing up, maybe that's why I love rodents and inverts so much?