Another Tarantula Story

Goliath Tarantula image from mentalfloss.com

I checked my blog stats recently. I observed that most of my visitors coming from Google Search landed on my blogs from November to December of 2007. When I checked out my posts in those two months, I found out that those were all about the different species of tarantula. I remember that I wrote a series about my fear of spiders.

Ehra Madrigal Image from igma.tv

I remember when I was watching “Eat Bulaga,” the longest running a noon time show on TV in the Philippines, with my mom. In one of the segments, they had this sort of a game similar to Survivor and Fear Factor. The participants, all women, had to enter into a wide, glass cubicle where they had to eat fried frogs while live frogs were jumping up and down their feet. Apparently, one of the girls, famous actress Ehra Madrigal was afraid of frogs because she would scream whenever she felt a frog jumped close to her feet.

I remarked, “What is it about frogs that she’s so scared about! It’s ridiculous!”

My mom quickly replied, “Why, what is it about spiders that you are so scared about? Isn’t it ridiculous too?”

“Well, spiders bite; frogs don’t.” I reasoned.

“But you can easily pat it away with your hands. How can they get a chance to bite?” She replied.

Well, mom’s right. Fear is really something ridiculous. What’s even more ridiculous is that I judge someone’s fear of frogs while I myself have a fear of spiders, Philippine wolf spiders actually. I haven’t seen a Filipino tarantula but I have no plans of meeting one in the coming days, at least, not in this lifetime.