Sadly, for all the wonderful things we enjoy in spring and summer here in Maine, it's also the time we welcome back some immeasurably undesirable guests. I'm referring, of course, to insects. Every spring, countless ticks emerge from the edge of the woods behind my house like a tiny German army advancing on Poland. Others mow their lawns; I mow the ticks that vastly outnumber the blades of grass. This oncoming horde is accompanied by an aerial escort of mosquitos soaring from the vernal pools out back, a veritable blitzkrieg of whirring, buzzing, bloodsucking vexation. And don't even get me started on the ants. But worst of all, are the spiders.

We moved to our home here in Yarmouth 12 years ago to find an infestation of gray, knobby, Ping-Pong ball-sized spiders suspended under every eve of the house and shed. Armed with cans of spider spray and a Whiffle ball bat, I waged war. They got the message and by the end of our first month here, there was hardly an arachnid to be found.

Recently, I read an article in which a noted entomologist stated that, no matter where we are in the world, we are never more than six feet away from a spider. This was not good news.

I don't like spiders. In fact, I'm terrified of them. I have absolutely no fear of snakes, heights, crowds, dogs, thunder and lightening, needles, flying, germs, flying germs or any of the other most common phobias. I know it's irrational, illogical and unreasonable but there it is. Show me a large spider and I'll show you one very large man that, in his attempt to exit the area, moves with a speed and dexterity that belies his size and age.

When I was a boy growing up in Cape Elizabeth, I had my first up close and personal encounter with large spiders. Back in the 1950s there were far fewer houses in the Cape and lots more fields. The grass was tall, my friends and I were short, and it was great fun to play in the fields, running through grass that towered over us.

We were playing kick the can in my yard one sunny, summer afternoon. A girl named Joyce was "it" and had threatened to kiss the first boy she caught, "all over his face". Well, no self-respecting five-year-old was going to stand for that, so I looked for the perfect hiding place.

My parents owned a large field that ran adjacent to our driveway and the grass, after being burned off in the spring, had rebounded mightily, growing to a lofty height of five feet or more. In I plunged and made a beeline for the center of the field, alternately bounding and running, pushing the grass aside as I went.

Looking back over my shoulder to see if I was being followed, I didn't notice the cluster of webs strung between the tall blades of grass. In the middle of each large web, hanging head downward, patiently waiting to capture and eat unsuspecting insects or excited five-year-olds, were a dozen or more large, black and yellow garden spiders.

I hurtled unchecked into their midst and was immediately covered in the sticky web. It went into my eyes and mouth, up my nose and seemed to wrap itself around my entire head. Worse still, the spiders came with it. I could feel them crawling on me, and three even had the temerity to bite me in apparent indignation at my destruction of their neighborhood.

Screaming at the top of my lungs I raced out of the grass and into my backyard, scaring the bejeezus out of my mother who was hanging laundry on the clothesline.

After that experience, I stayed away from anyplace spiders might be in attendance. I managed to avoid another incident for 11 years. But fate had decided that spiders and I were destined to face off again.

My next traumatic experience with the eight-legged fiends occurred at Camp Bishopswood in Hope on the shore of beautiful Lake Megunticook. It was there, while working as a counselor at the camp for the summer, that I first came face to face with Dolomedes Tenebrosus; the dock spider.

Not content to hang around in webs waiting for prey, these devils lurk under docks and along lakeshores, walk across the top of the water, can jump instantly as high as a foot above the surface and actually hunt and eat minnows!

I cannot adequately describe the horror and consternation a true arachnophobe like myself experiences when emerging from under water to find one of these beasts only inches from your face, clustered eyes glaring malevolently, eight legs spread wide on the surface of the water like some obscene, hairy catamaran.

One of the more pleasant duties at Camp Bishopswood was teaching campers to water ski. Two counselors would sit in the boat, one driving while the other kept a watchful eye on the skier behind. I had driving duty one day, cruising along the calm surface of the lake under the warm sun, an enthusiastic camper skiing behind the boat, secure in the knowledge that he was under the caring and watchful eyes of two reliable counselors.

I happened to glance down to my left and there, perched on the wooden bench seat less than an inch from my thigh, was the biggest, most repulsive dock spider I had ever seen. The hair that covered its legs and body could easily have been combed into a pompadour that would have made Elvis Presley gasp in envy.

You would have been impressed to see how coolly and calmly I panicked.

I jerked spasmodically to my right, at the same time yanking the steering wheel of the boat hard to starboard. The craft spun wildly about and I felt a hard tug from the stern and heard a shout and a splash. My fellow counselor had gone "rear end over teakettle" as my grandmother would say, and was in the water.

I saw a shadow move across the surface of the lake and looked up just in time to see our camper, framed against the brilliant blue sky, hurtling Icarus-like, face frozen in a rictus of terror. He hit the water with a crash, his skis landing several feet away a few seconds later. Fortunately he popped to the surface, shaken but unharmed. I, on the other hand, suffered deep emotional damage that would leave my psyche irrevocably scarred. That afternoon I volunteered for permanent duty in the arts and crafts building.

But as frightening as these encounters were, they pale in comparison to the Great Outhouse Spider of Molunkus Lake.

In 1983 I went on a four-day fishing trip to Molunkus Lake in southern Aroostook County with a friend. His father had built a very rustic hunting camp on the northeast shore of the lake, reachable only by boat. It was a very hot and humid day in August when my friend, Terry, and I loaded his boat with supplies, sleeping bags and fishing gear and headed off across the lake.

A half-hour later, we arrived in the small cove fronting the camp and carried our load up a low slope to the cabin. It was a plain, almost primitive two-room shack with a woodstove, a table, two chairs and two hard wooden bunks. An antique pump was located next to a verdigris-stained, trough-like sink.

Terry informed me that an outhouse was located behind the cabin, about 100 yards up a gently steepening hill. I decided it might be a good idea to take advantage of the sunlight and locate the facility immediately. I set off along a narrow, tree-lined and root covered track until I reached a small clearing. There it stood. To call it ramshackle wouldn't do it justice.

Built during the Hoover administration, it canted forward at a dangerous angle, the moss covered, wooden door ajar and hanging on rusty hinges. I looked inside, saw a bench seat with a square hole cut in the middle, a small pail of petrified sulfur, twigs and leaves several inches deep were strewn across the dusty floor and an entire library of moldy magazines with titles like Biker Babes, Dude, Bust Out and Jugs. It was clear the Algonquin Round Table didn't use the camp for meetings.

I headed back down to the cabin, calculating the possibility of lasting four days without "jettisoning the superfluous" so to speak, and gratefully reflecting on my father's oft-stated maxim that I was a man, and therefore the world was my urinal.

As luck would have it I was only able to hold out until midnight. Resigning myself to the inevitable, I grabbed my flashlight and headed up the path. When I reached the decrepit privy I steeled my nerves, took a deep breath and climbed in.

What I did next I will never be able to explain as long as I live. It was midnight, moonless, the only other human anywhere in the vicinity was snoring loudly a football field away, but some innate need for privacy made me reach out, close and latch the door and turn off my flashlight.

I sat hunched in the darkness, disoriented by the forward leaning angle of the bench. Realizing there was no need to sit in the inky blackness, I switched on my flashlight. Turning my head slightly to the right, I saw it. The Great Outhouse Spider of Molunkus Lake!

It sat in the middle of its web, the dried, drained husks of it victims hopelessly fettered in heavy silk all around it. In the pale yellow light I saw grasshoppers, frogs, mice and what looked to be a small squirrel.

The spider was only an inch from my face. As God is my witness, he was big enough to fillet! As my gaze met his, it seemed to me I saw the brow over his assortment of eyes furrow in anger at my intrusion. Then he began to move down his web toward my leg.

Letting out a yell that would have made my confederate ancestors from Virginia proud, I leapt to my feet, dropping my flashlight, which immediately shattered and went out. The outhouse was plunged into darkness once again.

I threw my weight mightily against the door. This wasn't good judgment on my part. In my panic, I'd forgotten that I had latched it. The small building, already leaning in that direction, shivered on its foundation and began to tip over. It crashed to the ground and lay there in the darkness with me inside. It had landed door side down so of course I was trapped in a sort of lavatorial sepulcher, pants around my ankles and heart in my mouth. It was at this moment that I discovered that, in addition to my fear of spiders, I appeared to be a bit claustrophobic as well. Who knew?

At that moment I felt what had to be a cocker spaniel scuttling up the back of my thigh. The spider! I began to kick and flail madly. The poor outhouse never stood a chance. Thirty seconds later I was running down the path, pants in hand, leaving behind a pile of very serviceable kindling where the privy had once stood.

There have been other confrontations, encounters and engagements and I've survived them all. I had assumed I'd made my home relatively spider-free, but now I find that this isn't possible. The critters are only six feet away! Suddenly, I seem to hear the clicking of thousands of little mandibles behind the walls. Tonight, I suspect I'll be sleeping with a Whiffle ball bat.

David Mason lives and works in Portland.