Guinea Pigs vs Spiders

We got ourselves two more guinea pigs yesterday.  We now have five - all girls (we don't want any surprise babies!).

I didn't think we would do the guinea pig thing with our kids.  They seem to be a common pet among most families at some point, but they never held any interest for me.  I like dogs and cats.  The Caveman and I have also had a few budgies and goldfish along the way .. not to mention the other, more unusual creatures we've allowed our kids to take in.  We have cared for silkworms, various types of lizards, injured birds, a turtle that had wandered away from a creek and more "pet" spiders than I care to remember.

I used to have a phobia about spiders.  The very thought of a spider being in the same room as me would have the hair on the back of my neck standing up.  There was once a huntsman in our bedroom that the Caveman had to remove before I would even consider entering the room.  I stood in the doorway while he was attempting to catch it, with a container and lid, on the opposite wall and I still squealed every time it moved.  The strange thing was, despite my intense fear of them, I didn't like spiders being killed.  I understood that most would prefer to be outside anyway and, as long as that's where they were, they weren't doing me any harm.  Once that spider in the bedroom was released into the garden unharmed, I was happy.

Then there was the time we were driving along in our car and another huntsman crawled along the inside of my car door, right beside my arm. I saw it and completely freaked out, unbuckling my seat belt and launching myself into the Caveman's lap while he was driving!  Not a safe thing to do at all but in the panic of the moment my fear didn't allow a lot of room for sensible thought.  The car was an older style with a bench seat in the front, so scrambling over into the back seat wasn't really practical until we had pulled over and stopped (which my man managed very well, considering I was blocking most of his view).  That spider was also released unharmed, although I was left a little shaken and apologising profusely to a rather grumpy Caveman!

The cure for my phobia came in the form of our first child, now our teenager.  I didn't want to pass on my phobia to him, so I learned to stay very calm if he was nearby when I saw a spider.  As it turned out, he did better than not catching my fear - he actually developed a love for the creatures.  As a toddler he would often come to me saying, "Mummy, look what I found!", only to open up his chubby little hand and show me a spider he'd picked up in the garden.  (Of course, he admits now that he was bitten by quite a few ... it's just lucky they weren't deadly).

Our solution was to buy him a bug catcher - it meant he could catch spiders "hands-free" and keep them for a few days before releasing them.  We would catch moths to drop into the bug catcher for our "pet" to eat and, to my surprise, even I started to find spiders more interesting.

I guess it's true that the best way to overcome your fears is to face them head on.  Through trying not to pass on my phobia and learning more about spiders, I ended up being much more comfortable with them than I ever expected.  I still don't like them in the house but, if I do see one, I don't freak out and I am happy to do the "catch and release" myself (most of the time anyway).

I think, after some of the pets we've had, I can be quite happy with guinea pigs!