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Like many of us, as summer yields to frisky fall, spiders would prefer to head indoors. One scuttled over my bare foot when I was vacationing at the coast last week. I was momentarily creeped out, sure, not so much by the spider as the sensation on my skin, followed by glancing down to see a midsize spider move in its alien manner across my foot.

I ignored it and it moved on. I don’t consider myself afraid of spiders. At least, not abnormally afraid. According to the Cleveland Clinic, wherever that is, arachnophobia is up there with ophidiophobia, which is the fear of spelling difficult words.

Wait, no, it’s the fear of snakes. With all due respect to the popularity of psychobabble today, that’s crazy-ape bonkers.

Spiders and snakes should not be neck and neck in a phobia race, should either of them have necks. Some snakes can reach 20 feet in length. Boa constrictors wrap around you and squeeze the life right out of you. I dropped out of Catholic school young, but I’m pretty certain they’re responsible for man’s fall from grace, for crying out loud.

What have spiders done? Nothing! Well, a lot are venomous, and you can get an infection from a bite, but without them, we wouldn’t have Spider-Man, the greatest superhero of all time.

Spiders want nothing to do with you and will actually help rid your home of insects. Yet judging by from some people’s reactions, seeing a spider is enough to make them jump through solid objects like Bugs Bunny or Wile E. Coyote.

I’m more apt to set them free. So be trigger warned, arachnophobes: This column is about the art of saving spiders.

Why save spiders? Much has been written and reported on how their pest control abilities are a feature, not a bug. (Oh yes; pun very much intended.)

Also, as humane treatment of creatures goes, this is pretty low threshold. I give myself a lot of ethical and behavioral latitude after I’ve successfully saved a spider or other insect’s life. I presume it’s how surgeons feel, at least talented ones.

Still, I kind of get how people are squicked-out by spiders. My bugaboo is rodents. I never need to be within 200 miles of a mouse or rat, alive or dead. I would lose all motor skills and faculties if one were to enter the room I’m in right now, and I can say with a fair degree of certainty that I’d go absolutely Looney Tunes on the architecture.

Twenty-some years ago, when my oldest daughter was a baby, I spotted a Florida housekeeping spider, better known as a huntsman, directly above her crib in the Tampa house we rented. Suddenly wide awake, I grabbed a broom, took one swat at the spider and missed.

The thing was gone in an eye blink. I’m sure we were able to go back to sleep, but I have no idea how. I now know, but didn’t then, that huntsmen are not very venomous.

Not that I got bit. I never even saw it again. Apparently, they’re called huntsmen partly due to their speed. That’s along with their hunting prowess, of course, their quarry including cockroaches. If you’ve never seen a palmetto bug, which is a large FLYING cockroach, consider yourself lucky. If you had, you’d be wishing for an ally such as the huntsman.

Maybe that’s when I began to gain respect for spiders. I do get how giant fuzzy tarantulas and similarly hirsute spiders are creepy, but for the most part, around Central Oregon, we have much smaller ones to contend with.

It’s been years since I killed one intentionally, other than a couple of black widows nesting too close to our house and kids’ yard toys. And one day this summer, with apologies, there was a little spider in my van that started crawling on a web from the visor toward my face, at eye level. I’m jumpy, I was driving, my arm moved involuntarily, etc. Hey, I like spiders, but my boundaries include my eyeballs.

As much as I think I understand fearing spiders, it’s hard for me to fully grok the naked hatred some people have when it comes to them.

There’s almost something smug about it. Like they firmly believe, were they to say it out loud — presumably in a mid-Atlantic accent — “Why of course you go medieval on spiders, my dear. Why would you not?”

Because you don’t have to. Next time you see a spider loitering in your domicile, get an oversized postcard like realtors, politicians and your mechanic are always sending, and any kind of cup. I prefer see-through to-go container because I like to see where the spider is while I attempt to capture. Plop the open cup upside down over the spider or, really, any offending insect.

Slide the card along the floor or wall until the spider has no choice but to step onto its surface, preferably all eight of its terribly awesome legs. Once it does, turn it over while covering container completely with the postcard, hope to God you’re holding it flat enough atop the cup without any gaps through which an enterprising spider could escape like Houdini, then take it outside.

If you’re phobic about spiders, swat away. But what if you miss? Maybe you should just find someone who’s willing to remove it for you.

What will happen to spiders when you put them outside? Well, you removed it from its home and put it in what is essentially the wilderness, but it’s not that cold yet. Still, it could die. All things do, right? But maybe not.

Either way, that spider is no longer your problem, and there’s no messy clean up.

Best of all, you’re basically a hero, if only to me, that spider and the hordes of insects that will thrive in your home with no spiders to prey on them.

Good luck!