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I firmly hold the belief that it is forever an option to change. I believe you can in fact train a seasoned creature, on the condition that the mature being is receptive and ready for growth. So long as the person is prepared to acknowledge when it was mistaken, and work to become a more enlightened self.

Well, admittedly, the metaphor applies to me. And the skill I am attempting to master, despite the fact that I am decrepit? It is an major undertaking, something I have battled against, often, for my all my days. The quest I'm on … to develop a calmer response toward the common huntsman. Apologies to all the other spiders that exist; I have to be grounded about my capacity for development as a human. The target inevitably is the huntsman because it is sizeable, commanding, and the one I run into regularly. This includes on three separate occasions in the last week. Within my dwelling. I'm not visible to you, but I’m shaking my head at the very thought as I type.

It's unlikely I’ll ever reach “fan” status, but I've dedicated effort to at least achieving a baseline of normalcy about them.

A deep-seated fear of spiders from my earliest years (in contrast to other children who find them delightful). In my formative years, I had a sufficient number of brothers around to ensure I never had to engage with any directly, but I still panicked if one was obviously in the general area as me. I have a strong memory of one morning when I was eight, my family unconscious, and trying to deal with a spider that had ascended the family room partition. I “handled” with it by positioning myself at a great distance, almost into the next room (in case it pursued me), and spraying half a bottle of pesticide toward it. It didn’t reach the spider, but it did reach and annoy everyone in my house.

With the passage of time, whoever I was dating or living with was, as a matter of course, the most courageous of spiders in our pairing, and therefore in charge of managing the intruder, while I emitted frightened noises and beat a hasty retreat. If I was on my own, my tactic was simply to exit the space, douse the illumination and try to ignore its being before I had to return.

In a recent episode, I stayed at a friend’s house where there was a notably big huntsman who made its home in the window frame, for the most part stationary. In order to be less scared of it, I envisioned the spider as a 'girlie', a one of the girls, one of us, just lounging in the sun and listening to us yap. This may seem rather silly, but it had an impact (to some degree). Put another way, making a conscious choice to become less phobic proved successful.

Be that as it may, I’ve tried to keep it up. I reflect upon all the logical reasons not to be scared. I know huntsman spiders won’t harm me. I know they eat things like insect pests (the bane of my existence). I am cognizant they are one of the world's exquisite, harmless-to-humans creatures.

Unfortunately, however, they do continue to walk like that. They move in the utterly horrifying and somehow offensive way possible. The appearance of their numerous appendages propelling them at that frightening pace induces my caveman brain to enter panic mode. They claim to only have the typical arachnid arrangement, but I am convinced that triples when they get going.

Yet it isn’t their fault that they have scary legs, and they have just as much right to be where I am – if not more. My experience has shown that taking the steps of making an effort to avoid immediately exit my own skin and run away when I see one, working to keep calm and collected, and intentionally reflecting about their beneficial attributes, has actually started to help.

Just because they are furry beings that scuttle about at an alarming rate in a way that causes me nocturnal distress, doesn’t mean they warrant my loathing, or my high-pitched vocalizations. It is possible to acknowledge when my reactions have been misguided and driven by irrational anxiety. It is uncertain I’ll ever reach the “trapping one under a cup and escorting it to the garden” level, but miracles happen. A bit of time remains within this old dog yet.