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I firmly hold the belief that it is never too late to evolve. I believe you truly can train a seasoned creature, as long as the old dog is receptive and eager for knowledge. As long as the person is prepared to acknowledge when it was mistaken, and strive to be a more enlightened self.

Well, admittedly, I am that seasoned creature. And the skill I am working to acquire, although I am a creature of habit? It is an significant challenge, a feat I have battled against, repeatedly, for my all my days. The quest I'm on … to develop a calmer response toward huntsman spiders. My regrets to all the other spiders that exist; I have to be pragmatic about my possible growth as a human. The focus must remain on the huntsman because it is sizeable, commanding, and the one I see with the greatest frequency. This includes on three separate occasions in the recent past. In my own living space. Though unseen, but a shudder runs through me and grimacing as I type.

It's unlikely I’ll ever reach “fan” status, but I’ve been working on at least becoming a baseline of normalcy about them.

I have been terrified of spiders from my earliest years (in contrast to other children who find them delightful). During my childhood, I had a sufficient number of brothers around to guarantee I never had to engage with any myself, but I still panicked if one was clearly in the immediate vicinity as me. Vividly, I recall of one morning when I was eight, my family still asleep, and attempting to manage a spider that had ascended the lounge-room wall. I “handled” with it by standing incredibly far away, almost into the next room (lest it pursued me), and emptying a generous amount of insect spray toward it. It didn’t reach the spider, but it managed to annoy and disturb everyone in my house.

In my adult life, whoever I was dating or living with was, automatically, the bravest of spiders in our pairing, and therefore in charge of handling the situation, while I produced frightened noises and beat a hasty retreat. When finding myself alone, my strategy was simply to exit the space, turn off the light and try to forget about its existence before I had to re-enter.

Not long ago, I visited a friend’s house where there was a notably big huntsman who lived in the casement, primarily stationary. As a means to be less fearful, I conceptualized the spider as a female entity, a gal, one of us, just relaxing in the sun and overhearing us yap. Admittedly, it appears rather silly, but it worked (to some degree). Alternatively, the deliberate resolution to become less scared did the trick.

Whatever the case, I’ve tried to keep it up. I think about all the logical reasons not to be scared. I am aware huntsman spiders won’t harm me. I know they consume things like flies and mosquitoes (my mortal enemies). I know they are one of the planet's marvelous, benign creatures.

Unfortunately, however, they do continue to walk like that. They travel in the deeply alarming and almost unjust way conceivable. The sight of their multiple limbs transporting them at that alarming velocity causes my caveman brain to enter panic mode. They are said to only have the typical arachnid arrangement, but I maintain that multiplies when they move.

But it cannot be blamed on them 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 implementing the strategy of making an effort to avoid immediately exit my own skin and retreat when I see one, working to keep calm and collected, and deliberately thinking about their good points, has begun to yield results.

Just because they are hairy creatures that dart around at an alarming rate in a way that causes me nocturnal distress, doesn’t mean they merit my intense dislike, or my shrieks of terror. I am willing to confess when my reactions have been misguided and motivated by irrational anxiety. I doubt I’ll ever make it to the “scooping one into plasticware and escorting it to the garden” level, but one can't be sure. Some life is left left in this old dog yet.