by Karen Telleen-Lawton, Noozhawk Columnist (read the original in Noozhawk by clicking here)
Have you ever wondered why, when we have such a natural aversion to spiders, they are the topic of so many nursery rhymes? Maybe it’s just that they’re one of the few species of wildlife that are still around for easy view. Their very lack of warm and fuzziness qualifies them for a second look.
Childhood spider references are a mixture of frightening and befriending. There’s the Itsy Bitsy Spider, who demonstrates patient diligence by venturing up the waterspout even after being washed off by rain. There is the spider that scared Little Miss Muffet off her tuffet. And there’s E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web, the 1952 book that did more for spiders than a Nobel Prize.
I favor this little poem by Janet Bruno:
Spiderlings hatch from eggs.
Each one has eight tiny legs.
A spider has more eyes than you.
Most have eight, and you have two.
A spider has two body parts.
Across its web it quickly darts.
From a spider’s spinnerets
Sticky spider silk jets.
Spiders feel the frantic tugs,
Of their favorite food; it’s bugs!
about:blank
Feared or admired, what good are spiders? It takes a little sleuthing, but an answer emerges from Dr. John Jackman, a Texas entomologist, who says, “They help keep a lid on the population of arthropods. They keep us from being covered up with everything else.” According to the Xerces Society, more than 99 percent of life on Earth is invertebrates such as insects and earthworms, so that seems like a worthwhile purpose indeed.
Takesha Henderson, a Texas college biology instructor, adopted a rosehair tarantula in 1997. She says, “A diverse spider population signifies a healthy habitat.”
I get that. A couple of years ago, I joined a Channel Islands restoration work trip to San Clemente Island. Our job, aside from not getting blown up by unexploded Navy ordnance, was pulling invasive iceplant off the native boxthorn. Boxthorn is the preferred habitat for the endemic San Clemente loggerhead shrike, a federally endangered songbird.
So we weeded about two tons of iceplant, piling it in 6-foot ice-stacks to shrivel in the sun. The only insects we found as we yanked the succulent vines off the boxthorn were black widows — sometimes dozens of them under a single thick patch of iceplant. Remote islands typically have few species because it’s hard to get there. Those black widows seemed to be filling most of the insect niches, making it an unhealthy habitat at least for us weeders.
A similar process happens when we try to make our homes into isolated bug-free islands. As the Natural Resources Defense Council posts on its website, “Blasting unwanted critters with a potent poison may seem like a satisfying solution to your pest problem, but the same stuff that’s toxic to pests is often toxic to people, too — especially kids. And because pesticides typically treat pest symptoms, and not underlying causes, they often don’t work as well as prevention-based alternatives.”
The NRDC describes other options, including sealing entryways, keeping your house clean and dry, swatting, trapping and using less-toxic alternatives.
Spiders have a cameo appearance in one of my favorite children’s poems, “There Was an Old Woman Who Swallowed a Fly” by Rose Bonne. Bonne seems to warn listeners to beware the dangers of blithely heading down slippery slopes. Perhaps she was alluding to humans’ tendency to swallow up the habitat of insects and other species. Or maybe she wasn’t.
Karen Telleen-Lawton, Noozhawk Columnist
Karen Telleen-Lawton is an eco-writer, sharing information and insights about economics and ecology, finances and the environment. Having recently retired from financial planning and advising, she spends more time exploring the outdoors — and reading and writing about it. The opinions expressed are her own.