An Iowa Garden

This cuddly critter has been lurking about our garage at night, being, I think, a fishing spider, one of the hunkier (3-4") forms of wolf spiders. Now, I've always rather liked snakes (though I came within a few inches of stepping on a small rattler while hiking in the Trinity Alps in California once, when I stepped over a log it was laying by). Spiders I don't mind either, but my relationship with them over the years has been a little spottier. When we were kids we lived in an old house, and at night, large wolf spiders would come up into our bedroom through the cold air register, run across the ceiling, and occasionally drop off and land ker-splat on your bare chest, and scramble up over your face. Quite a feeling when you're sound asleep in the middle of the night in the pitch black! Then, we had an old chicken coop that was rife with black widow spiders; we called them red violin spiders, and had no idea they were poisionous. I clearly recall as if it was yesterday, at about age 5, sitting on the ground outside the chicken coop, trying to use a little stick to flip over an angry black widow spider to see the red violin. We also used to always ask the Daddy long-legs "where the cows were"... you sort of poke at them with your finger while asking the question, so that they'll raise up a front leg and point. Once when I did this to a big old guy, he bit my finger like it was a tasty salami... man, that hurt! I also got chomped poking one of those huge yellow and black garden spiders with my finger. When I was a little older, I and my best buddy Mike, used to go into a spooky, deserted barn in the neighborhood, and use long sticks to knock large, hairy barn spiders out of their webs, which we'd collect and keep for a few days in jars. They looked like something out of your worst nightmare... I always wonder how critters like that ever mate and reproduce, they are so downright ugly and creepy. I had another close encounter with a black widow when I lived in San Francisco. The two guys who lived next door to some friends, loaned them their cabin on the Russian River, and when we walked in, I went over and opened up the sliding glass door looking out over the river, and a big black widow dropped about three inches in front of my face, and fell between the deck planks. I survived all of this, and spiders and I are now basically o.k. with each other, but I don't give them cutesy names.