Orcs.
I am enough of an arachnophobe that I actually have occasional nightmares about spiders that are frightening enough to wake me up.
It was not always thus. When I was a kid, my friends and I would go out at recess with our sandwich bags and catch these suckers. [Warning: big spider pic. Which actually gave me the heebies when I found it.] I don’t know what happened or when, but that innocent fascination became a morbid fear.
I too would like to be free of it, except I shy away from the kind of therapy I know it would take. There was a TV show that Robin “Hoarders” Zasio hosted a while back in which she used exposure therapy to cure people of animal phobias. One poor arachnophobe had to take a bunch of spiders out of Tupperware boxes and carry them, by hand, across a space and put them into new boxes. She was shaking and semi-hysterical but she did it. The thought of doing that … yeah, no.
If you’re on iOS, there’s an app called Phobia Free designed to help people overcome arachnophobia. I downloaded it and played around with it, but it’s a huge app and I ended up taking it off my phone because I needed the space. One of the developers is an arachnophobe himself, so that’s something. Here’s the iTunes Store link.
Andrew Zimmern did a segment on tarantula-eating in Cambodia for Bizarre Foods. He also described their flavor as “nutty.”
This is her book. I bought it and read it, and it’s lovely. She makes you root for the spiders so much, it gets harder and harder to be scared of them.
Also,a bit on spider therapy.
Alternatively, present her a gift the same size & shape as your head.
Thank you for digging those up! I’ve ordered the book, and am reading the threads.
Are you truly afraid? Or just grossed out?
As far as I’m concerned, “nutty” is an excellent description of anyone who eats spiders – any kind, anywhere. But I admit to being past-praying-for unconvertable, on this issue.