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I firmly hold the belief that it is never too late to evolve. I believe you can in fact train a seasoned creature, on the condition that the experienced individual is open-minded and willing to learn. So long as the old dog is ready to confess when it was mistaken, and strive to be a better dog.

OK yes, I am the old dog. And the skill I am working to acquire, although I am decrepit? It is an major undertaking, an issue I have grappled with, frequently, for my entire life. My ongoing effort … to become less scared of huntsman spiders. My regrets to all the remaining arachnid species that exist; I have to be pragmatic about my capacity for development as a human. The focus must remain on the huntsman because it is sizeable, dominant, and the one I see with the greatest frequency. This includes three times in the last week. Inside my home. You can’t see me, but a shudder runs through me and grimacing as I type.

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

A deep-seated fear of spiders since I was a child (as opposed to other children who find them delightful). During my childhood, I had ample brothers around to make sure I never had to confront any personally, but I still freaked out if one was clearly in the general area as me. One incident stands out of one morning when I was eight, my family slumbering on, and trying to deal with a spider that had crawled on to the family room partition. I “dealt” with it by standing incredibly far away, almost into the next room (in case it pursued me), and discharging a generous amount of pesticide toward it. The chemical cloud missed the spider, but it succeeded in affecting and annoy everyone in my house.

With the passage of time, whoever I was dating or sharing a home with was, by default, the most courageous of spiders out of the two of us, and therefore responsible for dealing with it, while I produced frightened noises and fled the scene. If I was on my own, my method was simply to leave the room, plunge the room into darkness and try to ignore its presence before I had to re-enter.

Not long ago, I stayed at a friend’s house where there was a notably big huntsman who lived in the casement, primarily lingering. In order to be less fearful, I envisioned the spider as a 'girlie', a gal, one of us, just chilling in the sun and eavesdropping on us gab. It sounds rather silly, but it was effective (somewhat). Alternatively, actively deciding to become more fearless proved successful.

Be that as it may, I’ve tried to keep it up. I contemplate all the rational arguments not to be scared. I know huntsman spiders pose no threat to me. I know they consume things like buzzing nuisances (my mortal enemies). It is well-established they are one of nature’s beautiful, non-threatening to people creatures.

Yet, regrettably, they do continue to scuttle like that. They propel themselves in the deeply alarming and almost unjust way imaginable. The appearance of their numerous appendages carrying them at that terrible speed triggers my caveman brain to enter panic mode. They ostensibly only have eight legs, but I am convinced that multiplies when they are in motion.

But it isn’t their fault that they have frightening appendages, and they have an equal entitlement to be where I am – perhaps even more so. My experience has shown that taking the steps of trying not to immediately exit my own skin and run away when I see one, trying to remain still and breathing, and deliberately thinking about their good points, has begun to yield results.

Just because they are furry beings that move hastily with startling speed in a way that causes me nocturnal distress, doesn’t mean they warrant my loathing, or my high-pitched vocalizations. I am willing to confess when my reactions have been misguided and motivated by irrational anxiety. I’m not sure I’ll ever make it to the “trapping one under a cup and escorting it to the garden” level, but you never know. Some life is left within this old dog yet.