YUCK – A Spider! A Snake! A Bat!

Do they deserve the bad rap they get?

My mother intensely disliked snakes. I doubt she ever encountered a real, live snake; while there are about seven snake species in Germany where I grew up, two of them venomous, it’s quite unlikely that she ever came across one. But any mention of snakes would freak her out, and if she saw the  picture of a snake, or worse – several snakes, she would express her disgust very strongly indeed. Same with spiders – these horrifying creatures had to be killed right away if one dared to enter the house. Actually, I remember that most encounters happened outside in the garden; you’d turn over a rock or look beneath some fallen leaves, and that’s where the poor creatures would sit – doomed to die as soon as they were discovered. 

I readily absorbed these feelings when I was a kid. I remember I had to call my Dad when I found a spider and wanted it to be killed. I couldn’t step on it myself – even through the soles of my shoes I was certain that something vile and revolting would get to me if I stepped on it. And snakes – I was sure they were terrifying, sickening creatures. Same with centipedes, bats, earthworms, mice, rats, and all other creepy-crawlies that one might encounter. See one? Fight or flight: either kill it or run away. NEVER look at it.

That was my general attitude when I traveled overland from Germany to India, with an old VW camper van. This was still possible in 1970 – through Italy, then-Yugoslavia, Greece, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and finally India. 

At that time it was fairly easy to get around with very little money. I remember I stayed at a dump called the Rex Hotel in Mumbai (then Bombay) for about $1 a night. The room had a shower and a little balcony overlooking the busy street below, which was endlessly entertaining. BUT. I’m not sure how it is nowadays, but then, in the early Seventies, there were all kinds of bugs and insects just about everywhere in India, unless you stayed at an airconditioned, fancy hotel (which the Rex most certainly was not), and traveled exclusively by airplane. 

There were spiders the size of which I didn’t even know existed. As big as a hand, with thick, hairy legs. Some of them even jumped. So it came down to this: either I went back to Germany or I got used to the spiders. No way could I kill them all. Put that way, the answer was easy: I refused to let a vague fear determine my future actions. Somehow, once I made this decision, they were much less threatening.

Now that I live in New Mexico I adore the fuzzy tarantulas that can be seen in September and October when the males migrate in search of a mate.

It took a very different experience for me to accept snakes. We stopped by the side of the road in a small village in  India to buy some fruit. Out of the corner of my eye I saw some movement – up in a tree, a luminous emerald green – a snake! She moved so gracefully, her motions were so liquid, fluid, that I was totally entranced. This green snake struck me as absolutely beautiful. And just like that, my antipathies were gone.

So, what is it that evokes fear and loathing in people when they see pictures of certain creatures, let alone encounter the creature head on? Let’s look at fear. We all have seen cartoons of a panicky elephant balancing on a chair when seeing a mouse… I certainly freaked out when I found a mouse in a drawer of my kitchen when I lived in Berkeley, California. HELP! But wait a minute. It’s a tiny mouse that was clearly terrified when it saw ME. They’re actually really cute! Of course one doesn’t want them in the house; they may carry diseases, they chew holes in dog food bags, they leave unappealing signs of their presence behind – but do you need to jump on a chair and  scream? What the heck?

I think it’s their speed, they appear in a flash and are just as quickly gone, because they can squeeze through the tiniest cracks. Maybe this triggers some primitive fear response in the brain, which was evolutionary advantageous for early humans. If some critters could bite and sting or  could be venomous, but one didn’t know WHICH ones exactly, it was better to run away from ALL of them. Or kill them if possible. 

Besides fear, all such creatures elicit disgust, revulsion, and strong aversion. Crawling things which have more than four legs are creepy; when the eight legs of a spider are hairy as well, they’re really hateful. And we won’t even talk about centipedes or millipedes. Remember, all these critters are relatively tiny compared to humans. While very, very few of them can indeed hurt us, most of them are harmless. Same for beasts WITHOUT legs, such as snakes and worms. 

Or bats – maybe it’s because they fly at night, silently. Maybe because some species live in large swarms. But look at the cute face of a baby bat that’s being nursed by a wildlife rescuer in Australia after many of the flying fox Moms were starving because storms, deforestation and changing weather has led to less flowering eucalyptus and fruit trees in the Sydney area.

What happens if one lets fear and antipathy rule one’s reaction to creatures that form a large part of our world is that one shuts that part out. Antipathy prevents interest, and anything I’m not interested in might as well not exist. My world is impoverished, diminished, small. Of course, my sister who virulently dislikes bats would say “So what” — she doesn’t WANT to know anything about them. They’re disgusting, that’s enough for her. She literally can’t see that her attitude clouds her perception, as if she were wearing glasses. Take the glasses off, and the world becomes much more interesting. Just like that.