A "HOODIE" DOES NOT A CRIMINAL MAKE...

Well.  I write having just committed a crime against nature.  I am ashamed.  I am humbled.  I am an idiot.

We have a gas boiler hot water radiator heat system in our house.  The boiler died last spring and we are just now getting around to replacing it, noticing the barely perceptible shift in light and temperature that signals fall...and chilly days and nights ahead.  I like heat.

This morning, Hub went down to the garage, where the old boiler is sitting after having been removed from the furnace room.  Pretty soon I heard him shouting, "Wow!  This is a HUGE spider!" and I went running to have a look.  I am not afraid of spiders.  I don't necessarily like them crawling on me, but I don't have the same freak-out fear that some people do.  In fact, I sort of find them fascinating.  I am loathe to kill spiders...I think they do more good than harm, so I am not their natural enemy.  I love August and September when they start to spin their webs outside my windows.   I watch them with awe as they weave their magic, and the morning dew catches on the intricate patterns making nature-art right at my door.

So I walked right up on the specimen Hub noticed on a cinder block in the garage.  It was really big!  And it had an interesting pattern and coloring, which I appreciated aesthetically.  We did decide, however, that it should be moved outside, so Hub carried the cinder block a distance from the house and I ran back inside to Google it, of course.

I found a really good site, telling how to identify venomous spiders, which of course I checked as a precaution.  I looked at a few photos and none matched our specimen, until.....

OHMYGOD!  There was one, the infamous Hobo Spider, looking exactly like the one currently stationed in my driveway!!!  Now it WAS time for me to have a freak-out moment.  That killer was just sitting there, waiting for us gullible humans to get close enough, then it would strike.  No doubt it would lay in wait for the most innocent of us, our little Angel, who is curious and fearless.  Surely it would attack her with vicious abandon at the least provocation!

I knew I had to KILL IT NOW!  I ran for the garden shovel and took a swipe.  My aim was off and it suddenly sprung from its perch on the cinderblock and took off, all eight legs running for its life.  There was nothing to it but for me to PURSUE it, striking over and over the ground around it with my shovel until finally I struck the fatal blow.  Whew!

Feeling the rush of adrenaline subsiding, pretty proud of my courage, I came back inside to find the website still open on my laptop.  As I reached to close it, I realized there was more to read after I had stopped at hobo spider, so I scrolled down.

Gulp.  Here is what I would have read, had I not panicked 10 minutes earlier:  "The giant house spider gets a horrible reputation and causes a lot of panic in Northwestern homes because it is easily mistaken for the hobo spider."

Easily, indeed.  

Much has been made of the tragic and terrible profiling of an African American teen who was killed by a man who judged this young man on little more than the clothing he was wearing (a sweatshirt with the hood pulled up over his head), assuming he was up to no good in a neighborhood where he "didn't belong".  I am no apologist for this man.  I am appalled that a jury acquitted him.   But I feel just as guilty in this case of the mistaken spider.  I made a snap judgement based on some similar coloring, not taking the time to investigate further, or look for other data that would have proven helpful in judging whether there really was call for alarm, in this case a huge discrepancy in size.

Fear can be a powerful motivator and often can save us.  Panic is different.  Panic is reactionary and irrational.  I panicked today.  Spidey, you taught your lesson well;  I won't forget.  And I'm sorry.

At least, that's the view from here....©