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Never kill a spider in the afternoon or evening, but always kill the spider unlucky enough to show himself early in the morning, for the old French proverb says:

Araignee du matin--chagrin;

Araignee du midi--plaisir;

Araignee du soir--espior

(A spider seen in the morning is a sign of grief; a spider seen at noon, of joy; a spider seen in the evening, of hope.)

An old proverb cited in A Spider on the Stairs by Cassandra Chan (a full review is up on Bookwyrme's Lair)

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Kill a spider and bad luck yours will be,
Until of flies you've killed fifty-three.
          English folk-saying as recorded in The Book of the Spider by Paul Hillyard

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"A Mr. Wadey in Australia had a gold-fish pond and over this pond there was an outjutting piece of rock festooned with spider web. One morning in 1935 he saw much splashing there and found one of his gold-fish, two to three inches in length, entangled in the web. Going nearer he saw a large black spider on its back. The fish died. So did the spider, for Mr. Wadey had a kink in his make-up and preferred gold-fish to spiders."
     from The Spider by John Crompton

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The blue mud dauber may be a bit of a blackguard in one sense, but in another she is something of a heroine. Two workers at the Louisiana State University Medical Center found that blue mud daubers take reat numbers of black widow spiders. .. They found nearly one hundred black widows in five nests.

        from Wasp Farm by Howard Ensign Evans

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"Hypothetical calculations suggest that the spiders living on 1 hectare (2½ acres) of land devour over 47,500 kilograms (104,500 pounds) of prey each year, most of which is insects and other spiders."
          from The World of the Spider by Adrienne Mason

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"Spider venom comes in many forms. It can often take a long while to discover the full effects of the bite. Naturalists have pondered this for years: there are spiders whose bite can cause the place bitten to rot and to die, sometimes more than a year after it was bitten. As to why spiders do this, the answer is simple. It's because spiders think this is funny, and they don't want you ever to forget them."
          from Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman

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During World War II, fine silk threads from black widow spiders in America and from garden spiders in Britain were used for the cross hairs of telescopic gun sights.

        from The Book of the Spider by Paul Hillyard

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"Orb web spiders have special claws and non-stick feet so they can walk on their webs without getting stuck."
          from Spiders by Nic Bishop

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"As a threat, spiders rank way down on the list, below bees, wasps, and even lightning strikes."
          from Spiders by Dan Greenberg

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