I have a long and colorful history of an irrational fear of those eight-legged freaks!
And it all originates from a perfectly logical occurence!
I was about two years old, and at our local hunting camp picnic. It is held every year on the second Sunday in September...
It used to be held on my Grampa's old farm property. The adults would shoot trap and tell hunting stories, and all of us kids would run around in the woods.
Everybody would get together at Dinnertime, and we'd all eat WAYYY too much!
The kids all decided to play "Hide & Seek",,, Being so young: I just plopped myself down in patch of hay that had been missed during the second cutting.
By I found myself eyeball to eyeball with a HUGE patch of Spyders!!
They say that When I came out of that patch: I was about eight feet in the air, and sounding like the local Fire Siren!