Let me state here and now and for the record I do not scream.

When I found a snake on the deck, I believe it was a salmon-bellied racer (Mastigodryas melanolomus), I calmly shouted: “Snake on deck. Snake on deck,” (non-poisonous) and waited to be joined by my husband.

This morning, however, I emitted what I believe to have been a high-pitched screech. Metric Man disagrees, he says I screamed (refer to the first sentence).

I can deal with snakes and have.  Usually, we catch them and call our friendly neighborhood herpetologist, Ray, who takes both the poisonous and non-poisonous critters for his collection or to return to the wild far, far from us. But this was not a snake, this was a tarantula zebra (Aphonopelma seemanni).

The last time I saw a spider that big was at a science center and it was behind bars. At that time, I wanted to back away, but I was surrounded by my Cub Scouts who thought it was way cool so I couldn’t even shudder.

Thank heaven it was “hold the cockroach” day, not “hold the tarantula” day because I could deal with holding the cockroach, barely. After all, it wouldn’t do to let my Cubbies see that I was afraid of stuff I could squish.

But today it was a large spider in the house! For the record, I have actually learned to leave spiders alone in their natural habitat. I even saw my first tarantula in leaf litter. It was big and all I did was point it out to my gardener. But this was not the spider’s ‘natural habitat’ this was my natural habitat.

So I screeched. And Metric Man? He was tolerant and mildly amused. He reminded me of the tarantula in the leaf litter so I chilled out a bit.

Understand that spiders are our friends especially if we don’t get too close. Spiders trap pesky insects that mean to do us harm. Not as many as bats but enough.

They seem especially fond of a nice juicy grasshopper, and grasshoppers cause a lot of damage. They also catch flies, beetles, and wasps among other things. Sadly, honey bees do get caught in webs but the good spiders do outweigh the bad.

If it sounds like I am trying to convince myself to save the spider that is exactly what I am doing, even though I can admire a beautiful orb web and even its spider from a safe distance.