My name is Pete Scully, and I am an Arachnophobe. Snakes, rats, ghosts – none of them scare me, but spiders… they are my great weakness. I knew when I came out to California that this was Black Widow country, and I have feared the Widow since I was very small, but now I have a new venomous arachnid to fear – the Brown Recluse. So far, I have encountered neither. Thankfully. I am always on the lokout, and the other night I got a fright – I was on my way to bed, I didn’t have my glasses on, I lifted up the pillow, and this little brown spider ran around in circles before vanishing behind the bed. I tell you, trying to go to sleep that night, trying to ignore the possibility of a little eight-legged freak crawling across my face, that was a task little short of Herculean. In fact it was Poirotian.

I am fascinated by spiders. When I was a schoolboy, other children would pretend they had spiders in their hands just to see my reaction. Just seeing a photograph of one makes my spine feel like Tornado Alley. California’s Central Valley has just those two dangerous spiders, I’m told, but in some abundance. It is because it gets so darned hot here. I’ve done a little research on my enemies lately, and wow that Brown Recluse does not sound like a friendly old eater of flies. When it bites, it does not poison you in the same way that the Widow does, but leaves behind a flesh-eating bacteria that slowly deteriorates whatever it has bitten. Check out this nasty set of images. Can you believe a spider can do that?

And how big is this thing, this Brown Recluse? It’s TINY!! Less than half an inch long! How are you supposed to know if one is lying in your clothes (as they do), or among your books (as they do), or in your bed (as they do)???  Even as I write I am in a panic – I’m from Britain, for heaven’s sake! We don’t have anything that can do you any serious harm there! Our only poisonous snake is the adder, whose bite is more full of sarcasm than venom. So what is my solution, how am I going to learn to live alongside these fanged menaces?

A big hammer. It’s the best I have come up with. When I finally see one, I want to be ready.