What I Learned from Holding a Hand-Sized Spider in the Desert

“What are you doing?” one asked.

“Are you crazy?” another said.

“A little, yes,” I answered, and I meant it. It’s hard to feel sane while you’re willingly in the act of trying to pick up a wild tarantula.

Like any sane person, tarantulas always scared me. I don’t have to deal with them very often, but I run into a couple every October. Such is the life of a hiking guide. October is mating season for tarantulas, it’s one of the only times you’re likely to find one out of its hole during the day. As a hiking guide, I get outdoors several times a week, so running into the spiders in October is somewhat of an inevitability.

This last October, a crazy idea got into my head. I realized how much the tarantulas freaked me out, and I didn’t like that, so I started doing research. I’ve learned from experience that we often fear creepy crawling things simply because we don’t know much about them. The things we do know, like the fact that spiders bite, often prevent us from learning anything more.

For several weeks, I spent time off and on reading about tarantulas and watching videos. Everything I’d read told me that they were calm and they’d almost never bite a person. I’d learned that most tarantulas in the United States have tiny hairs that they can push off. When the hairs come in contact with human skin, they embed themselves, and the human body treats them like any other intrusion. I’ve never experienced it, but the feeling is supposed to be similar to touching fiberglass.

Once I felt like I’d learned enough, I decided the best thing I could do to get over my fears was to pick up a tarantula the next time I spotted one. Word must have gotten out because after I decided to pick one up, the tarantulas were nowhere to be found.

The company I guide for is a fitness resort that does hikes every morning, Monday through Saturday. Because of the way their program is set up, I often end up hiking with the same people all week. The week I’d decided to pick up a tarantula, I was hiking with a group of eight hikers. At the beginning of the week, I told them to keep an eye out for tarantulas, then promised I’d pick it up if we found one.

That helped me in two ways. One, I’d have several sets of eyes searching, and two, I couldn’t back out if we found one. Though I had extra eyes now, we didn’t find one until one of the last hikes of the week, and even then, it was pure chance. We’d begun a nice hike in Snow Canyon State Park when one of the hikers started experiencing muscle pain. I had another guide with me, so I took the injured hiker back to the van and left the group with my colleague.

This was still pretty early in the hike, so I had time to take the injured hiker back to the resort. On my way back to the trail, I spotted a tarantula in the middle of the road, only a hundred yards from the parking lot. My heart began to race. I didn’t have to tell anyone. I could ignore it. Of course, that didn’t work. I got too excited and told everyone via walkie-talkie. I shook off my fear and jogged down the road.

As if it knew I was coming, the spider had hardly moved from the spot I’d found it. My pounding heart started to affect my hands. I was shaking, which made me even more nervous. How could I hold the spider if my hands were bouncing? I looked around to make sure the road was clear of cars, then crouched down to get a better look at the spider. It was the size of my hand!

I did my best to calm myself, took a deep breath, and then slowly placed my palm on the road directly in front of the tarantula. It still didn’t move. I don’t know why, but I’d expected it to walk right over and hang out on my hand. Instead, I had to coax it, and it wasn’t easy. I pulled out a piece of paper and gently pushed it from behind. Instead of walking forward, it pivoted and walked around my hand.

I had to get a lot more brazen in my attempts. Only when I gave it no other options did it step onto the back of my hand. I slowly lifted it from the ground, and my shakes instantly returned. The spider shook with my hand and didn’t seem to appreciate the movement. I knew I needed to keep still so I wouldn’t scare it, yet I shook. The more I shook, the more my fear rose, so the more I shook.

It makes sense when you think about it. My body could sense the danger and was trying to tell me to get the tarantula off. I had to fight every urge in my body not to throw the poor creature into the bushes. Fortunately, I have two hands, and I was able to use my free one to steady myself. I grabbed my wrist to slow down the shaking, and that did the trick. As I watched the spider calm down, my nerves followed suit.

As each second passed, my confidence grew, and my fear faded. The spider started walking, and I had to keep alternating hands so that it had somewhere to go. I carefully made my way back to the parking lot and had the opportunity to show the tarantula off to all the hikers. They still looked at me like I was crazy, but most of them were fascinated by what I held. Many of them had never seen a tarantula in the wild, and I got to give them that experience.

Other hikers nearby saw all the commotion and came over for a look. Before I knew it, there was a line of people all coming to check out my tarantula. A couple even asked if they could try holding it. All the while, I shared the facts that I had learned from my research. After fifteen minutes, I hiked out into the bushes and gave the tarantula back to the desert.

Tarantulas look scary, but they’re not aggressive. They might have big fangs, but they don’t like to use them. Like many creatures, they don’t want trouble, they just want to live their lives. Even if one did bite, its venom isn’t particularly potent. I never got bit, but I’ve read that it hurts about as bad as a bee sting, then goes away. I knew these facts, but I was still afraid. It wasn’t until I actually picked up a wild tarantula that my fear subsided, and I gained a new appreciation for the creatures.

This experience taught me that when I have a fear, it’s often because of the unknown. That means that to overcome, we need to learn and experience. I didn’t pick up the spider until after I’d learned and assessed the risk of doing so. It can be hard to face your fears, but overcoming them brings a profound sense of accomplishment and opens your mind to the world around you. It comes at a price, but it’s worth it, even if you feel a little crazy in the process.