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This is Boris. Created in homage to Lady Hale's spider brooch of the flesh-eating camel spider, Boris has been carved from toxic yew wood (found on North Meadow and worked with a plane and chisel to minimise dust and finished with wet sanding - respirator on at all times). The legs are from copper cabling left over from the kitchen refit and were heat-treated in a gas flame. The story that copper sulphate acts as a libido suppressant is a myth so this particular Boris is likely to remain worryingly active. I plan to keep him in a cage at night.
Delving into arachnid physiology was fascinating and I was struck by many of the similarities between mammalian and spider limbs.
Curiously, the amount of reading into the life-cycle of the spider has done a lot to counter the arachnophobia I had before creating Boris. Psychologists originally proposed exposure therapy, also known as systematic desensitisation, in the 1950s as a way of treating specific phobias. The idea is that if you are presented with the phobic stimulus (for example, spiders or heights) repeatedly, but safely, then your fear reduces over time.
I suspect that the big, hairy hunting spiders would still be a problem though ...
September 2019
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