Spider Security

   
   As a provider of true trivia I will offer two items relating to arachnids. They were found in some old notes of mine and will be provided because I have not lately had any new thoughts.
   The first involves a jewelry store owner in San Francisco who needed a security solution for his glass sidewalk display case. German shepherds were too large for the case and, if stationed beside it, were unlikely to be able to distinguish a customer from a criminal. So for $10 per month he rented a tarantula. There was the additional expense of a  live mouse every six months since"tarantulas like to hunt prey." According to the article, this solution worked. The sign near the display reads: “Warning: This Area Patrolled by Tarantulas.”
   “Day and night, seven days a week Rosie sits in the window with long, hairy legs arched to support a bulbous black body, all three inches of it. “ Mr. Cole[the owner] says he and the fully insured, 5-year-old Rosie have become fast friends. Although apparently a little cranky in recent days, Rosie no longer moves menacingly toward Mr. Cole when he changes the window display. And she lets him pick her up - sometimes."

Spider Torture

   Although I cannot find many things that were in my possession just a short while back, I do have this 37 year old note. Thus, this bit of trivia is not only interesting, it is also old which should make it worth more. Apart from stopping criminals, spiders can be used to torture them as well.

Here is how they were employed at one time in France:

   “A specially trained torturer should first of all cut off their eyelids with a pair of scissors...poisonous spiders will be put in the half-shells of walnuts, placed on their eyes, and securely fixed by strings tied around their heads. The hungry spiders...will then gnaw slowly through the cornea and into the eye, until nothing is left in the blind sockets”

Sources: 

 "Jeweler Hires Crime Deterrent: A Guard Tarantula," Andrew H. Malcolm, The New York Times, Aug. 24, 1975.

The torture example is found in this book: Ideology and Experience: Anti-Semitism in France at the Time of the Dreyfus Affair, by Stephen Wilson. I have not read it since it is tremendously long and supposedly contains 4,500 footnotes. I noticed it in a review of the book in the Times Literary Supplement, Oct. 22, 1982. I probably should have been doing something else at the time.

If you wonder why you have arachnophobia the answer is found in this good article: "The Human-Spider Struggle: Arachnids Have Long Fascinated-and Repelled-People. Scientists Are Only Now Starting to Understand Why," Jessie Guy-Ryan, Topic Magazine, Nov. 2018.

Post Script:
All of this reminded me of "Tarantism", but I must have lost my notes about that important subject. This will have to suffice:
"Tarantism: A disease once thought to result from the bite of the tarantula spider. This extraordinary affliction was associated with melancholy, stupor, madness and an uncontrollable desire to dance. In fact, dancing off the tarantula venom was considered the only cure. The dancing was violent and energetic and went for 3 or4 days.
In the 15th to 17th centuries, the city of Taranto in southern Italy was the center of tarantism which spread across most of southern Europe. The term "tarantism" (also called tarantismo or tarantolismo) comes from the town of Taranto. The large and very venomous tarantula is also named for the city of Taranto. From: medicinenet.com"