I guess I've been into doing dangerous stuff for a while. You could probably say I'm addicted to it; I've jumped from planes, driven in high speed races, and even gone crocodile hunting a few times. What with all my experience in risky business, if you will, this job seemed perfect for me.

When I walked into the lab the first day, it looked as you'd expect. Centrifuges, test tubes, and biohazard bins lined the place. A man in a suit came out and greeted me. "Ah, you must be Mr. Stafford! Pleased to meet you. The name's Max. Please, follow me." We moved away from the lab to an office upstairs.

Once we had sat down, he continued. "Alright, Mr. Stafford, I'll make this quick. Right now there's a huge move for natural medicine. We stand to make a lot of money, if we can get in early. Your job will be to get your hands on a black widow spider. Even though a bite can be fatal, the venom is said to have some strange medicinal properties; we want to be the first to find them. Get in touch once you have one. The more venom you get the more you'll be paid, so bring us back the biggest things you can get. Here's a mesh box that you can use to hold the spiders." A smile jumped onto his face. "Good luck!"

-----

Two hours later, I had begun searching through the woods near my house to try and find one. I kept searching for hours, but by the end of the day I had only found one--miniscule at best, no longer than a centimeter. With the amount of venom they would get from it, I'd lose money on gas delivering it. I opened the box, and it crawled out.

I started to head home before dusk. Turning around, I froze: perched on a branch just inches from my face was a huge black widow, easily as long as my finger. That spider was easily worth ten thousand dollars, but at its size, also very lethal.

I slowly eased the box up to the branch, but the spider started crawling toward the tree trunk. Without thinking, I threw my arm over the branch and held the box open in its path. The spider continued unfazed, crawling over the box and onto my arm. I nearly jerked my arm back, realizing that if this enormous spider bit me, I would be very much dead within the hour. I hugged the tree to give the spider a way off, but through some horrible lack of luck, I stood for two full hours while the spider just kept crawling from arm to arm. I kept waiting, my life at stake; I may have done some crazy things before, but I sure wasn't going to die because of a stupid spider.

I finally settled on the fact that the spider would not leave. I came up with a plan: I would take the mesh box and scoop it up before it was able to bite me. With any luck, I would get to the spider before it could panic. I cautiously moved back from the tree and focused on the red triangles on the spider's body; the reflection from the moon was all that allowed me to see.

Still worrying for my life, I snapped the mesh box over to my other arm and--miraculously--it worked. In one smooth motion the lid scooped up the spider and fell shut, saving me from certain death. Still nearly paralyzed with fear, I stumbled back to my house and collapsed on the couch.

As soon as I woke the next morning, the first thing I did was check the box to make sure that it wasn't just a weird dream. Sure enough, the spider was still there. I rushed to the car and drove to the lab.

-----

"Incredible! I was expecting you to need more than one day to find anything, let alone this!" A scientist prepared a collection tube. "Now, all we need is for the spider to bite down on this tube, and it will shoot the venom to the bottom. Then we can measure it."

The scientist began to provoke the spider, rubbing the tube up against its mouth. I waited anxiously for a few minutes, but nothing happened. Still, he kept trying to get a sample.

After ten minutes, Max interrupted. "Charlie, sex the spider."

Another man, who I assume was Charlie, took the spider and examined it. Shaking his head, he returned it. "Male." Max turned to me: "Males don't bite. I'm sorry, but we won't pay for what we can't get."

I thought for a moment. Why had I risked my life for such a worthless creature?

I turned to Max. "I don't think this job is right for me. Sorry." I went back home and took a nap.