I keep an assortment of spiders in glass jars at my desk.
     My favorite is a slender, dark brown jumping spider. She hatched and grew up near a hotel in the Davis Mountains of West Texas. We met last June after she crawled onto my arm while I was enjoying an evening view of a rugged canyon, a spectacular scene visible from outside our room. I almost brushed her away, thinking she was an ant.
     Then I looked again. Ah, an ant mimic spider, I realized, upon counting her eight legs and seeing her dangle from a thin strand of silk stuck to my arm. I put her in an empty film canister, carried her home, and later made a place for her to live in a baby food jar. On the inside of the glass, she quickly spun an oblong, silken retreat no bigger than your little fingernail. At night, she slept in her nest, and during the day, she caught and dined on small moths or fruit flies that I caught for her.
     Yes, some people think I'm strange to keep spiders, but most can't resist a look at my half dozen jars. And more often than not, they ask the same question as they hold one up and peer inside.
     "Is it poisonous?"
     No, I reply. As a general rule, most spiders, even large, hairy tarantulas, are harmless (except for two, the brown recluse and black widow spiders). See, though? That's the kind of unmerited reputation spiders have. No matter whether they're big or small, long legged or stout bodied, spiders of any kind are BAD. Deadly, too. Or so most people assume.
     Why? Perhaps it's because spiders just LOOK evil. And because they allegedly scuttle around the house or creep through the grass, ready to attack any human who happens along. So most humans, assuming the worst of a creature that's smaller than they are, feel the best defense is a good offense and squash them.
     As a self-taught spider naturalist and a devoted spider activist, I'm here to straighten out the myths. And, in the process, hopefully save a few spider lives.

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     MYTH: All spiders are poisonous and, therefore, harmful.
     TRUTH: Yes and no.
     "I am often asked whether all spiders are poisonous, and my answer is 'yes' since they almost all have poison glands," says Rainer F. Foelix, author of the "Biology of Spiders" and director of the Natural History Museum in Aargau, Switzerland. "But that does not mean they are poisonous to man. In fact, only a very few species are dangerous to us."
     The belief that all spiders are dangerous is the most common misconception about spiders. It comes largely from our innate fear of spiders, a distrust often passed from generation to generation. Children who see their parents recoil in horror at the sight of a spider and then kill it without hesitation will naturally react the same way. That is, until they learn otherwise.
     My children, Patrick, 12, and Lindsey, 8, respect and appreciate spiders. I call them my spider assistants because they often alert me to ones they find in the yard or house. One afternoon, Patrick hollered at me to run outside. "Look," he said, pointing to a plump jumping spider on the leg of a wooden saw horse. It was feasting on a huge cockroach at least twice its size. I got my camera and photographed the pair as an example of one of the ways spiders help us -- by eating insects.
     Biologically, the balance of nature depends on the more than 36,000 species of spiders that
inhabit the earth. In one day, a spider can consume up to two times its body weight in insects. Without a healthy population of spiders, the number of insects would be out of control. We need spiders in our environment.
     "Spiders play a major role in controlling insects," confirms Dr. Norman Horner, a biology professor in Midwestern State University at Wichita Falls. "No doubt, if the spiders were pulled from the food web, many species of insect populations would explode, resulting in much more damage to plants."
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     MYTH: Spiders will run across the room to bite you.
     TRUTH: Like most animals, spiders are shy and prefer to be left alone. In most cases, they'll run the OTHER way to get away from YOU.
     "Spiders view us as an object in their environment to walk on," says Susan Riechert, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Tennessee. "A spider's eyesight is so poor that it primarily detects light and dark, and movement.
     Spiders bite people when they are squashed in shoes or pushed up against our skin when we walk into their webs. Of course, you don't want to poke a finger between the fangs of larger spiders, such as wolf spiders and tarantulas. That will provoke a bite."

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     MYTH: You'll die after a spider bites you.
     TRUTH: First of all, the odds of a spider biting you are low. Your chances of being bitten by a dog, on the other hand, are much greater. Medically, a dog bite poses more of a threat, too.
     "Dogs kill many and injure thousands more every year in the U.S.," says Dr. Robert G. Breene, an arachnologist with the College of the Southwest in Carlsbad, NM, and editor of the American Tarantula Society's Forum magazine. "Spiders may injure psychologically but do not kill or seriously injure anyone. That is, except for recluse spiders if the doctor doesn't know the correct treatment."
     Brown recluse and black widows, both found in Texas, are two spiders you should avoid.
     The black widow hangs out in a messy cobweb, a pastime common to her cobweb weaver (Theridiidae) family. A widow's distinguishing mark is a bright red hour-glass shape on the underside of her glossy black abdomen. Unless she's guarding an eggsac or two, the black widow prefers to keep to herself and spins her web in out-of-the-way places, such as under objects and in corners.
     Like the black widow, the unsociable brown recluse hides in dark areas, such as closets, under furniture, and in boxes (so always shake out shoes and clothes). It rarely appears during the day but moves about at night, probably in search of a meal. Close examination of a recluse will reveal a distinctive violin-shaped mark on its head (the violin handle points toward the spider's abdomen). Anyone bitten by a recluse or black widow should seek medical attention.
     One early school-day morning in May 1998, Lindsey hollered that she'd found a spider on the staircase. I ignored her, thinking "what's one more spider in the house?" Later, I spotted her spider. I looked closer and gasped. Could it be a brown recluse? I'd never seen a live one before. Carefully, I corralled the spider into a jar. Under a light, I saw the violin mark. It was  a recluse. Now everyone in my family recognizes the spindly legs and waxy beige abdomen of a brown recluse. So do friends and school children who glimpse the recluse, which to this day lives in a jar on my desk (recluses have lived up to five years in captivity).

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     MYTH: Daddylonglegs have the most potent venom of any "spider."
     TRUTH: These arachnids, which are not spiders, are completely harmless.
     (By the way, arachnids refers to the class of arthropods that have eight legs and two body segments, such as spiders, scorpions, harvestmen, mites, and ticks.)
     Largely thanks to the Internet, this widely-circulated myth is mixed up in several ways.
     "Daddylonglegs are not spiders at all, but a separate order (Opiliones) of arachnids called harvestmen," explains Bill Shear, chairman of the biology department at Hampden-Sydney College in Hampden-Sydney, VA."And none of them have venom glands."
     The ugly creatures don't have much of anything else either. Common in Texas, daddylonglegs have a small, globular body attached to long, spindly legs. You'll see them in wooded areas, under rocks, logs, and eaves, in caves, and other sheltered areas.
     "The myth about daddylonglegs seems to have its origin in the publication years ago of some preliminary work done on the venoms of Australian spiders," Shear says. "In Australia, the name 'daddylonglegs' is actually applied to a spider, a member of the family Pholcidae, our cellar spiders. Supposedly the venom was tested and found to be very potent, but the spiders are so small that they constitute no danger at all to humans. Because of the same common name being applied to two very different animals, this big misunderstanding has resulted."

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     MYTH: Black widows eat their mates.
     TRUTH: Not always.
     Of the 20 to 30 species of widow spiders, only a few eat the males. Under natural conditions, most males, unless they're in bad physiological shape, easily escape the female.
     "The problem with the myth is that it is a generalization," says Petra Sierwald, adjunct curator of  Insects at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago and editor of the "Journal of Arachnology." "There are many different species of widows, and different species behave differently. Some widow species do eat their mates after mating but not always. Other species do not. So it depends on the species. Also, many spiders show different behavior in captivity. My research indicates that small cages contribute to male-eating in widows."

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     MYTH: All spiders make webs.
     TRUTH: Not at all.
     "All spiders do produce silk, but not all spiders build webs," says Dr. Horner. "Some of the ground-dwelling spiders produce silk to make retreats, line burrows, build platforms to transfer sperm to palps, and construct eggsacs."
     My ant mimic spider is among those that spin retreats, for both resting and laying eggs. In the course of her eight-month-long life at my desk, she made several nests and laid eggs two times, two months apart. Besides learning how difficult it is to rear spiderlings (in her first brood, I kept one of seven alive), I also discovered that spiders store sperm; hence, her ability to produce fertile eggs with nary a male in sight. After her second batch of spiderlings hatched, I decided to release them on the front porch -- all 14 of them.
     Someday I hope to spot a descendent of my little ant mimic mother. If a visitor happens to see it, too, and asks that age-old question ("Is it poisonous?"), I'll reply, "Heavens, no!"
     And hand them a complimentary copy of this article.