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Introducing myself and Hans

Hansepans

New Member
3 Year Member
Messages
2
Hey,

I'm new to this forum and to keeping T's. Actually I had severe arachnophobia and would scream like a little girl whenever I saw a spider no matter how small it was. For me every spider was HUGE, had big fangs and was going to bite me, even looking at spider pictures made me cry...thinking back I'm kind of emberrased :oops:

After no longer daring to go to the downstairs bathroom due to fear of seeing a spider I decided to face my fears headon. With rubber spider replicas. My roommates hid them throughout the entire house until I eventually started getting used to it. I put spider wallpapers on my desktop just to force myself to look at it every day. Then after relapsing and climbing on the stove after a spider crawled from under the fridge I got so tired of myself and took the leap of buying a T.

I did some research, struggled between getting a Grammostola rosea and a B. Smithi. Eventually I chose the latter and bought her from someone who had her for three years since a hatchling. She is sooo beautiful and my fear of spiders is completely gone. Whenever I see a spider now I compare its size to that of Hans (my B. Smithi is female but has a male name...long story) and laugh at myself for ever being scared of spiders.

I don't handle her often since she is skittish but I did pick her up 2x and she was very calm. I love her to bits and am so happy that I not only overcame my fear but gained a wonderful companion in my life as well.

33f52t2.jpg
 

Josh

Administrator
Staff member
1,000+ Post Club
Messages
1,257
Welcome to the community! I was like you - arachnophobic - until I got my T. Now I'm gotten the bug! (no pun intended!)
 

Quandry

Member
3 Year Member
Messages
81
She's gorgeous! :D Welcome to the forum and to the hobby. My husband (Foxface on here) was also very arachnophobic. He went through desensitization therapy, but he was still skittish around spiders. So when I got into an entomology graduate program, it was pretty much a given that he was going to have to learn to deal with spiders. I used some of the outreach tarantulas (very calm) to get him used to them. Then he decided it was time to let me get one. I picked out a curly hair, and I was looking at a second when he said he wanted a B. vagans spiderling. I figured if the formerly arachnophobic man wanted his own tarantula, he could get whatever kind he wanted. LOL! He's now thinking about what he wants for his second one. :)
 

Hansepans

New Member
3 Year Member
Messages
2
Thanks everyone for the warm welcome! I'm amazed to find out that there are so many others who conquered their arachnophobia by taking the plunge and getting their own T. I guess fear of spiders mostly stems from our lack of understanding them or false beliefs that every spider is out to get and bite us. What really changed my view on spiders was when I first opened the doors to my T's viv and she ran for her life. There she was huge with her killer fangs and she was afraid...of me! That really put things into perspective for me.

I hope to learn a lot on this forum and just reading posts and looking at the amazing pictures you guys posted is already keeping me occupied for hours!
 

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