���ϳԹ���

Maren Larsen: From ���ϳԹ��� Magazine, this is the ���ϳԹ��� Podcast. 

Maren (field): Adam is obsessed with spiders and has to the,um, enjoyment and sometimes not so much of his colleagues. And so we're trying to see Adam's perspective and uh, learn how to love the creepy crawly things.

Maren: This is me, Maren Larsen, introducing my colleague Adam to a guide at the Butterfly Pavilion outside of Denver, where we're taking a tour of their annual Spiders Around the World exhibit.

Maren (field): Um, and I'm the person who's learning how to love the creepy crawly things, which is good because I live in a basement with a bunch of spiders. 

Adam: Here's a nice little spider for you. 

Maren (field): Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Okay.

Maren: And that was me seeing a Goliath birdeater tarantula for the first time. As you might be able to tell, I'm a bit of an arachnophobe, which makes me pretty much the opposite of Adam.

Adam: My name's Adam Roy, and I'm the executive editor of Backpacker.

Maren: Adam and his family are devoted members of what he calls the Bug Zoo. Maybe a more apt name for the butterfly pavilion, because while it does house many, many butterflies, it’s the only standalone invertebrate zoo accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, and it houses all kinds of bugs.

Every October, the pavilion puts on the Spiders Around the World exhibit, timed, of course, for Halloween. This year's edition features twenty species of tarantulas, including the goliath bird eater, which, Adam informs me, is the largest spider in the world by both mass and body length, topping out at six ounces and five point one inches, but not, concerningly, by leg span. But, contrary to the name, it rarely eats birds. They're too hard to catch. Our guide tells us that more common items on its menu are small mammals and amphibians. 

As an average height human woman, I find myself nervously wondering if I count as a small mammal.

Maren (field) I mean, it does look massive.

Adam: He's afraid of you. See? He's running away.

Maren (field): I'm, the feeling is mutual.

Maren: I have been afraid of spiders my whole life. The sight of a thumbnail sized arachnid scurrying across the ceiling of my garden level apartment sends my heart racing and causes beads of sweat to accrue on my brow like a cartoon character.

I even check my podcast recording space for them every single time.

My colleague Adam, on the other hand, routinely posts pictures of and news about spiders on company forums, often to the horror of his co-workers. His feed on the social media site formerly known as Twitter reads like a spider watching diary.

And a year ago, he wrote a feature about his affection for the eight legged invertebrates for ���ϳԹ��� Magazine, called “Keep Your Bird Watching. I'm a spider man.”

When I first moved into my apartment and discovered my creepy, crawly roommates, I reached out to Adam for advice on how we could cohabitate peacefully.

He wrote back that documenting your household spiders is a good way to be less scared of them. Adam knows it works, because he's done it himself.

Adam: I think I felt the same way about spiders that most people do. Kind of nervous around them, not phobic or anything like that, but they gave me the creeps.

Maren: Then, in the fall of 2021, Adam's mother-in-law became terminally ill with cancer. He and his wife and son temporarily relocated from their outdoor paradise home in Colorado to Lincoln, Nebraska to help take care of her. 

Adam: And the problem with Lincoln, Nebraska, if you're an outdoorsy person, is there isn't a ton to do there. It's a nice enough town and there are some hiking trails, but you burn through them pretty quickly.

So I was kind of looking, you know, for ways to keep myself occupied.

And I, I hit on birding.

Maren: One day, Adam grabbed a pair of his mother-in-law's binoculars and his son, and headed to a local wildlife preserve.

Adam: I immediately discovered the flaw in my plan, which was he was, um, gosh, he was two years old then, barely two, and he thought it was the funniest thing in the world to run away as soon as I looked away from him.

So I'd like lift the glasses up to look at the birds. And I would just hear him like giggling and running full speed down the trail. And after a while it got to the point where it was like, I'd touch them and he'd run. So I gave up. I was really frustrated. 

Maren: Adam retreated to his in-law's basement, where he and his family were staying. Birding was a bust, but in that subterranean space, he had an epiphany.

Adam: I was sitting alone on the couch. And I saw this little black spider just walking across the carpet, and I kind of had this thought, which was, well, people watch birds, why can't I watch spiders? You know, they're right here. I don't have to leave the house. I don't need any equipment to do it. Um, so I got really close to it and I took a picture of it and I downloaded this app, that, you know, purported to be able to identify different kinds of bugs.

And I uploaded the photo into it and it spit out an identification. This was an Eastern Parsons spider. and, I kind of made a note of it in a little notebook I had bought for birding.

Maren: Thus, Adam's new obsession was born, and his fear of the creepy crawlies started to fade away.

Adam: Every time I would get close to one, the fear got a little more muted and a little more muted and a little more muted until I was just inches away from them, looking at their fangs, not worrying about anything.

Maren: Honestly, that sounds like a dream to me, and it's very far away. 

Adam: If you're not full on phobic, and by that I mean you're not hyperventilating and having panic attacks when you're near spiders, you're just grossed out and scared, I would push yourself to get close to them. And part of that is it really, once you look more closely at them, you start to recognize them as an animal, not like a weird little Halloween decoration.

At first, you know, you're going to feel your skin crawling and you're going to get a little sweaty. But the second time it's going to be a little easier and the third time it's going to be easier yet. And, you know, a couple of weeks later, you're going to be like, you know, just fascinated by them and not have any fear of them really left at all.

I mean, my son is a great example. He literally grew up around spiders because I got into this when he was two. And he, you know, I have to lecture him not to pick up ones he doesn't recognize.

Maren: Mm hmm. Ha ha ha. All right.

Adam: But the other thing I was going to say, the other, the second thing that happens when you spend a lot of time watching spiders is it starts to get a little addictive. Um, it's kind of like playing. Pokemon in real life. It's just like every day you're finding a new one and adding it to your little book, and you're finding another one and adding it to your little book and writing down all these little facts about them next to it.

Maren: Okay, so the spider part I don't quite understand yet. But the penchant for identifying and logging wildlife? I totally get that. I am a plant fiend. I've got a Pokédex, or guidebook, where I look up all the plants I see on my hikes, and once I identify them, write down the location and date I first saw them.

I'm the friend who constantly takes mid-adventure breaks to point out pinedrops, huckleberries, and amanitas. Adam is doing the same. Just pointing out wolf, jumping, and fishing spiders. Maybe we're not so different after all.

Adam: Your house really is an ecosystem in a way, right? It has all sorts of different environments from like dark little corners to bright, sunny walls to entrances and exits where, you know, bugs might enter, to, you know, dark spaces behind shutters to cracks in your driveway. And spiders have all sorts of different needs, so they gravitate towards those different environments.

It's kind of like how if you walked around a national park, you might find moose in the willows grazing, and you might find a herd of mountain goats higher up on the mountain above the treeline, and you'd see squirrels up in the trees and stuff like that. It's the same way with spiders. Once you start to learn what kind of spiders live in your house and, You know, in your neighborhood, you start to get this much richer mental map of the ecosystem you're living in. It’s just all happening on this micro scale that people don't notice.

And in reality, there's more than 50,000 species of spiders on earth. And you probably have at least a few dozen living near where you live. Um, by which I mean like in and around your house. 

If  you ignore spiders and other little arthropods like that, I mean, you’re missing out on like most of the world's animal life. 

Marwn: For Adam, watching spiders adds a rich layer of enjoyment and satisfaction to his time outdoors, and sometimes even indoors. Where most people see the weeds outside my apartment building, I see lamb's quarters and know that you can actually harvest the leaves and cook them like spinach. Where most people see a creepy spider in their garden and shoo it away, Adam sees a woodlouse hunter and knows that it has six eyes instead of eight and a taste for roly polies.

Adam: I guess the question to ask yourself is like, what do you see when you go to a park? Right? You just see like, you know, a swing set, some kind of monoculture grass, a couple of trees that you'd recognize. That's like a really, to me, a really drab kind of sad world to live in.

If you go a little closer, you get down on your hands and knees, you know, you get your face close to the bark and look between the leaves, you're going to see all these little animals walking around. You're going to see a million kinds of beetles. You're going to see these little flies and flying insects, lacewings, moths, whatever, flitting around.

And you're going to see spiders, you know, spinning webs, crawling around on, the plants and on the swing sets and on the benches in the park, waiting for their prey to come by. And I just think that's such a more satisfying way to look at the world.

Maren: Waiting for prey to come by? That idea makes my skin crawl. But still, Adam was starting to help me see the value of watching spiders over squishing them. He also made sure that I knew, intellectually at least, that my fears were misguided.

Adam: I think one thing that kind of becomes apparent when you get into spiders is that like once you start to accept them as animals, the idea of just squishing them for existing starts to feel pretty grotesque. I mean, when it comes down to it, you're killing an animal that really isn't hurting you at all.

The bottom line, if you're wondering about the danger of having spiders in your house, is that almost 100 percent of the time, having spiders around us is, believe it or not, probably a net good when you look at it. 

Spiders don't spoil your food. They don't spread disease. What they do do is they eat a lot of bugs that can spread disease.

We have in the United States two kinds of spiders that are potentially dangerous to your health over the long term. One is the Black Widow, and we actually have three species of black widows here in the us. then we also have the recluses, the brown recluse. And then we have a couple of much rarer species in other parts of the country. If a spider isn't one of those two genuses, you don't really have to worry. The absolute worst case scenario with anything that isn't one of those, is you're going to basically get the equivalent of a bee sting. And even those spiders, the thing is people assume they're like a rattlesnake, you get bit by them, you know, clock's ticking, you got to rush to the hospital, get antivenom. How many people do you think have died from a spider bite in the United States in the last 20 years?

Maren: Was it one?

Adam: It was one according to the poison control records I read.

There's not a central clearinghouse for spider bite injuries, you know, so I had to kind of piece this together. But I was able to find one documented confirmed death by spider bite. And I, I gotta emphasize too, these are not rare creatures.

If you live in a part of the US where Brown recluses are common, it's very possible you have an established population of them in your house.

Millions of people who are living near Brown recluses, almost zero of them get bit. Ones who do get bit, most of them have really no ill effects. It's always a good idea to see a doctor if you get bit by one, but most of them recover fine with no ill effects.

Maren: Okay, fine, so I'm not going to die. But I was still convinced that the worst thing that could possibly happen to me while observing a spider was that it would somehow touch me with its too many legs. So I asked Adam what the next step in my spider watching journey should be. He suggested researching a beginner friendly starter species.

Adam: So somebody is nervous about spiders or scared of spiders, the best gateway spider, bar none, is the jumping spider family.

Maren: Start with a spider that jumps? He had to be kidding.

Adam: The thing with a lot of spiders is, they look kind of alien to us, you know, you can't really see where their eyes are. You can't really tell which way they're facing, what they're paying attention to.

Jumping spiders have like a face. they have eight eyes total, but they have two big eyes with two smaller ones. They’re fuzzy. They don't really have long spindly legs. They have kind of like usually kind of chunky bodies and little legs. They’re very visual, so they look at anything that gets their attention. So we, you know, it's easy to read those as like an animal.

And they're cute. They're just cute. They've got these big eyes. And they've got these little hairs that look like eyelashes sometimes. 

If you watch them, they're like cats. You know, they kind of like creep up a little closer, they creep up a little closer. They creep up a little closer, and then they like jump. And when they jump, it's kind of funny because like cats look graceful when they jump and jumping spiders just look like they're like going for it like all their legs splayed out like full superman. 

Maren: A cute spider? I was skeptical. Adam proceeded to send me a bunch of pictures and videos of one of his favorites, the bold jumper, Phidipus audex, and I have to admit that he's a little right. Look it up, make sure to find a picture of its face, and you'll see why.

All right, so if I actually want to seek out spiders and actively watch them, what's next?

Adam: Just go for it. You don't need any special training. You don't need any special equipment. you can just go and do it. That's the beauty of getting into spidering. They're all around you. You can do it right at home. You can, you know, go into the basement of your apartment building and look around. You can go look at the street trees outside your place. You can go walk to your local park. just slow down a little bit.

Maren: After the break, Adam and I head to the butterfly pavilion, where I confront my fear face to surprisingly large spider face.

[advertisement]

Maren (field): We're going to see some

Adam: We're going to see all sorts of spiders.

Maren: I am at the Spiders Around the World exhibit at the Butterfly Pavilion in Westminster, north of Denver, Colorado, with my colleague, spider enthusiast Adam Roy, and two guides.

Russ Pecoraro: I'm Russ Pecoraro. I'm the Vice President of Marketing for Butterfly Pavilion. 

Rich reading: I'm Rich Reeding. I'm the Vice President for Science and Conservation at Butterfly Pavilion.

Maren: Set up just for October, the Spiders Around the World exhibit has more than 20 live tarantulas and tarantula spiderlings, often shortened to slings, on display in glass terrariums. And this year, they have cordoned off 80 square feet of their tropical butterfly conservatory to create the Spider Zone, where we will walk among the literal hundreds of free-roaming, orb weaving spiders that they have released inside the space.

I am terrified. 

Adam can barely contain his excitement.

Maren: I would like to start with them behind class.

Russ: Yeah, okay. 

Maren: That sounds good to me. 

Russ: And then after that we'll do a little behind the scenes. 

Maren: Okay, that sounds great.

Russ: Cool.

Maren: Alright, let's see some spiders.Let's do it. Okay, let's do it.

Maren: The four of us enter a room full of small glass terrariums, most containing a spider bigger than my hand. One is the Goliath birdeater you heard me react to at the top of the episode, and while it's the biggest, the others aren't far behind. My blood pressure spikes and my shoulders hitch up around my ears as Adam, Rich, and Russ describe the hairy, scary, eight legged beasts around us as cute, and kindergartners much braver than I line up to hold a tarantula named Rosie, who is actually one of many Chilean rose haired tarantulas the pavilion breeds on-site and makes available for public interactions.

Russ: Rosie's like a eight-legged kitty cat. You know, she's kind of, she's soft and, you know, surprisingly light and super docile.

So, um, you'll get a chance to hold Rosie later if you'd like. It's all, it's all a challenge by choice. 

Maren (field)Uh huh, uh huh. Yeah.

Maren: Russ tries to reassure me of the fun and safety of this undertaking.

Russ: Rosie's probably been held by seven million people, uh, in our time, in the twenty-eight years we've been here, and, uh, no bites.

Maren: Isn't Rosie a few different spiders?

Russ: So, Rosie, we say, is a little bit like Santa Claus.

Maren: Oh. Okay.

Russ: There, there are a lot of Rosies out there doing, doing work, doing the work. 

Maren: Uh huh. 

Russ: Um, and, uh, you know, when kids get in line to see her, they either, like, are elated when they get to the end or they freak out and cry, right? Um, so, yeah, Rosie's got a good union. Uh, she only has to work two hours a week. 

Maren: Good for Rosie! But I stall with a maybe later, and we continue to peruse the terrariums. Adam, Russ, and Rich form a united front in the staunchly pro spider camp.

Russ: The butterfly pavilion, our whole mission is education, right? We're, we're focused on changing people's attitudes from ooh to ah, you know, like they're, Oh, they're actually cute. And they're, uh, they're beneficial. And you know, they're important to humanity. Rich says this all the time. If, if, uh, we disappeared off the face of the Earth, Earth would go right on trucking and actually probably be in better shape than it is now. If these guys disappeared we'd be in trouble probably in a couple months. 

Maren: In a couple of months?

Russ: In a couple months. Is that right Rich?

Rich: Well invertebrates are the little things that rule the world right. So they they control the ecosystems upon which we depend so Invertebrates create our soil, they clean our water, they pollinate our food. And things like spiders control pest species that we consider pest species and if they weren't controlled would take over.

You might have an eruption, what we call an eruption of grasshoppers or cockroaches if you didn't have spiders controlling them. A plague. A plague of them, indeed.

Maren: Okay, so maybe a few spiders is better than a plague of just about anything else. But as we move through the exhibit to see the tarantulas that live here in Colorado, it's clear that things are not looking great for these pest controllers. Rich has spent many years studying the so-called mate-gratian of tarantulas in southwestern Colorado, and in that time, he's seen their numbers dwindle.

Rich: As we plow up fields, uh, to plant, we break sod. We’re losing tarantula habitat as we put in subdivisions. We're losing tarantula habitat. If we spray pesticides, we're losing tarantulas. So they're probably declining, but we don't know for sure because we just haven't collected those data, in the past, as we are doing now.

Russ: Yeah, speaking totally anecdotally, people who live there have, have said they're seeing fewer and fewer. You know, you Used to have to almost weave around them on the roads near La Junta, in October. And now, you know, you see fewer and fewer crossing the roads. But obviously, that's just people's personal observation. 

Rich: Yeah. I mean, that's my observation as well as I used to get on there fifteen years ago. and, um, there were a lot and you didn't have to weave. and it's, it's not as common to see as many. You still see quite a few. There's still thousands, but are there fewer? My guess is yes.

Maren: It's sort of like, uh, I think they call it like the windshield effect.

Rich: I call it the windshield effect.

Maren: There's like fewer insects on your windshield if you drive a long distance and there used to be you know. 

Rich: Yeah I always tell people that's the windshield effect. But also when I was young they used to sell things that you'd probably find strange like screens for your radiator and radiator brushes to clean off your radiator and keep the bugs from getting in your radiator and clogging it up and they don't even sell those anymore. 

Russ: The thing you got to remember is that spiders eat a lot of these insects and you can't remove a big chunk of that food web that way without the spider population going down too. 

That's what people have found in, in doing surveys of them in Europe, in parts of Australia that some of these populations wherever researchers have looked tend to be trending down over the past few decades.

Rich: Yeah, we kind of call it the insect apocalypse, and it's bad.

Maren: Last year, an investigation by Reuters reported a steady decline in the global insect population of about 2 percent each year linked to deforestation, pesticide use, artificial light pollution, and climate change, among other factors. This decline, which is often anecdotally perceived via the windshield effect, is significant and disturbing.

Invertebrates make up the foundation of many food chains. To paraphrase Russ, without them, we and pretty much all other life on this planet will be screwed. With the specter of the decline of invertebrates and subsequently humanity looming, we leave the relative comfort of the terrarium room and head through the butterfly conservatory for the spider zone.

���ϳԹ��� the netted enclosure, I try to stall as blue morpho butterflies the size of birds zip through the air between us.

Maren: Okay, so what, um, Yeah. What do we, what do we need to know before we enter the spider zone? 

Rich: Um, nothing there. You're you'll be safe. Don't worry.

Russ: What I would tell you is don't brush up against anything. 

Maren: Right, yeah. 

Russ: Kind of stay in the middle.

Maren: Got it. 

Russ: Because they are really good at kind of blending into the environment.

Maren: Great. Cool. Wow, this is going to be super fun. Oh, boy. Ooh, they are big.

Maren: We step inside, and as I try unsuccessfully to quell my nerves, Rich gently redirects me to appreciating their aesthetic beauty.

Maren (field): There's like a bunch up there. Yep. One, two. Oh my god, there's so many Ooh. Yeah. These are, um, these are big guys. They're not, not for the faint of heart.

Rich: See how pretty they are. Yeah. I mean, I think they're beautiful.

Maren: He points to one at eye level, just inches from his hand. I jump back as Adam identifies it and invites me closer.

Adam: I don't want to push you out of your comfort zone, Maren, but I found the thing that helped me get the most appreciative of spiders was getting really close to them.

Being able to, like, see the details of them, so. This one seems like it's in a great position if you wanted to get up and close and take a really close look at it. So this... 

Maren: Oh, it's like pearly. Yeah, so... It is very pretty, you're right. It looks like a seashell. 

Adam: So this genus is called Argiope and that comes from the Latin word for silver.

And that's because they have these very fine, um... Cetae, I think you'd call them. Um, these little hairs on their back that in the sun kind of shimmer. Oh wow. They look really metallic. So they're really beautiful animals once you get, you know, you can get close enough to see that.

Maren: I step a little closer, and I see what Adam means. This spider really is beautiful. Seeing how colorful and unusual its markings are, watching it pull silk from its abdomen and we've a beautifully intricate web right before my eyes. It does make me feel a little more inclined towards making sure that spiders have a safe home on our planet. 

And that, Rich says, is exactly the point. If people can appreciate spiders instead of just fear them, they might be persuaded to care about their decline.

Maren: So why did you choose these spiders for this exhibit?

Rich: Because they're large, uh, charismatic, to me. Easy for people to see, spot, and smaller spiders would be really hard to see and, and that would then evade the purpose, which is to educate people about the importance of spiders. And, um, why we should conserve them and protect them.

Maren: As we move through the exhibit, I get better at spotting spiders and pointing them out without recoiling. I even take a half stab at identifying a golden silk orb weaver, whose web does actually look kind of yellow.

Maren: Oh, there's one! 

Adam: Yeah, that's nice. 

Is that a golden, that's the golden silk or weaver one, too? It's a big one.

Russ: Big one, yeah. And it's making its web. 

Adam: Well, Maren, I was really happy to hear when you saw this one, it wasn't a scared, uh, ooh, there's one. It was an excited ooh, there's one.

Maren: He's right. I think my curiosity is starting to override my fear. Eventually, we move out of the spider zone, and it's not long before I exhaust all my remaining questions and can stall no longer.

It's time to meet Rosie.

Maren: I, I think I'm out of questions, honestly. Well…

Russ: Are you going to ask me to hold Rosie? 

Maren: I think I probably should for the tape. It's probably the right thing to do. I think it's worth doing. 

Adam: That's the conclusion we need. 

Maren: Yeah, I know. It's like, it's really good for the narrative. Alright. Alright, let's go do it. Yeah, it's time. Yeah, it's time.

Maren: I make Adam go first. The handler holds his palm flat for Rosie's safety, and then gently nudges her forward. She stays on his hand for 30 seconds, a minute, two minutes. Both Adam and Rosie seem perfectly content with this arrangement.

Adam: Feels kind of like holding a hamster, just with more legs. I don't love that visual.

Maren: Eventually, the handler nudges her off, gives Adam a sticker that says, ‘I held Rosie,’ and it's my turn.

Maren (field): I’m gonna take off the headphones. Can I hand this to you?

Sharon Kovich:  And if you want her to keep moving, I can make sure she's just on and off.

Maren: I do want that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I want the minimal amount of experience. Oh god. Okay.

Sharon: It’s up to you if you want to just jump right in, but we can also ease into it. We sometimes do what are called Rosie High Fives, where you can give me just one finger. 

Maren: Oh yeah, let's do that first. And we can just tap her. 

Sharon: I'll hold your hand. Okay. We'll tap her foot together, and she'll stay on my hand, but you can feel kind of what the bottoms of her feet feel like.

Maren: Okay, great, yeah. 

Sharon: So, I will hold your hand. I'm going to tap her back feet to get her. I'll put Rosie on mine.

Maren: Ah, okay. Um, okay.

Sharon: It is okay if that is all for you.

Maren: Okay, I think that might be it for me honestly. 

Sharon: Would you like a sticker as well? 

Maren: Even if I didn't hold her, would I still get a sticker? 

Sharon: You faced your fears today, and I took it out.

Adam: Yeah, little little steps.

Maren: Literally little steps. Thank you.

Maren: I am not proud of the noises I made when Rosie's hairy leg brushed the tip of my finger, but this morning, my very worst fear was a spider touching me. And now I've faced it. Clearly, I still have a long way to go, but I'm willing to try Adam's spider watching fear reduction exposure method. I can see the value in it, and the value in having more of these creepy crawlies around.

Maren (field): Alright, thanks so much for everything. Thanks so much. Have a great day. Bye.

Maren: Adam and I head outside and we take a few extra minutes to wander around the grounds of the Butterfly Pavilion to look for the less visually impressive but still ecologically important arachnids that make their homes here in Colorado.

Maren (field): Oh, there's, oh, there's one right there. 

Adam: That is a jumping spider. That is a juvenile phidippus, probably phidippus audax. Um, that's a really common jumping spider you find in basically all of the continental U. S. Um, but they actually make great pets.

Maren: Hmm. I guess it is kind of cute.

Thank you to Adam Roy for your time and enthusiasm for this episode. You can read his article about getting into spider watching on outsideonline. com. And try it for yourself.

Adam: Not everybody has a spider expert on call near them. Um, like we're lucky enough to on the North side of Denver.

But everybody who has access to the internet can access some really great communities based around spiders.

One is the spiders subreddit. r/spiders, which is a great resource for quashing misinformation. A great resource for getting help from both, enthusiastic amateurs and professionals and identifying spiders you can't recognize.

I-naturalist is the best app to download. If you're interested in spiders, it's the same app you would use for birds, for, for plants, for fungi and stuff.

And if you're like me and you've already gone past the point of no return and become a real obsessive about it, it shows you where you can find interesting kinds of spiders near you.

Maren: Thank you also to the Butterfly Pavilion for letting us visit and to Russ Pecoraro, Rich Reading, and Sharon Kovich for showing us around. And if you're in the Denver area, the spiders exhibit will be on display until Halloween and Rosie and some of her tarantula friends can be seen year round.

This episode was written and produced by me. and edited by Michael Roberts. Music and mixing by Robbie Carver. Listener, do you have a spider story you'd like to share? Record it as a voice memo and email it to us at podcast at outsideinc. com. And if you're enjoying this show, leave us a review wherever you listen, or tell your local invertebrate enthusiast about us.

The ���ϳԹ��� Podcast is made possible by our ���ϳԹ��� Plus members. Learn more about all the benefits of membership at outsideonline. com slash pod plus.

Okay, this is a side note. I found a spider in my bathroom, yesterday, and I usually would have, like, killed it or vacuumed it up or, honestly if we're being real, had my girlfriend squish it. But I had her catch it in a glass, I looked at it pretty closely, I took two pictures of it to send to Adam for identification, and we released it safely outside my apartment, far away from me. And there was like a couple hours of panic when I thought it might be a male black widow spider, but it turns out it's a false widow, and according to Adam, completely harmless. So, I didn't kill a spider, because it wasn't doing me any harm. It was just existing, and I relocated it, for both of our comfort and safety.