If you’re looking to babysit at the Wolfe household, the only requirements are that you need to be comfortable with tarantulas, hissing cockroaches, millipedes, and cats.
Nine-year-old Winnifred Wolfe is a self-taught spider biologist. She has her own website, teaches classes to help adults and children with arachnophobia, and has spoken at a national conference two years in a row.
With the help of her mom, new OVS math teacher Rosalynn Wolfe, she has also been conducting a research project for several months about adults with arachnophobia, consisting of a 10 page paper and a PowerPoint.
“I don’t exactly know the reason why I love them so much, but it’s just a thing that kind of stuck to me and it’s kind of like glue,” explained Winnifred, who goes by Freddie. “You can’t separate me from what I love because it’s been with me so long. I don’t know the exact reason, but I just love spiders.”
Wearing a dress adorned with spiders and scorpions, Freddie explained that when she, her mom, and younger brother, Everett, lived in Tucson, Arizona, there were always black widows that lived under the porch.
Ms. Wolfe would teach Winnifred that she needed to respect the spiders and leave them alone. But it was after reading Charlotte’s Web when she was five that Freddie knew she felt a connection to spiders.
“Winnifred’s interest in spiders was like a spark,” said Ms. Wolfe, who teaches calculus at Upper Campus. “Once the fire was lit, there was no turning back.”
After discovering her passion for arachnids, Freddie read a book called The Tarantula Keeper’s Guide, which was the starting point of what would come to be years of research. After reading the guide with her mom, Freddie asked Santa Claus for a tarantula.
That Christmas morning, Freddie woke up to a tank under the tree. Inside was a Chilean rose hair tarantula, which she fittingly named Rosie.
Now Rosie is about five years old, and has eight or nine (even Freddie doesn’t know the exact number) other tarantula companions.
Because of Rosie’s friendly and calm temperament, she has been held by many of Freddie’s students in her classes. In these classes, she explains why tarantulas are important and how people can improve their relationship with spiders.
“When I do classes, I try to tell people what’s good about spiders. I try to hear about why they think spiders are scary,” said Freddie, who is in 4th grade at Topa Topa Elementary School. “So, I usually ask them what they thought the negative things about spiders were and I tried to find a positive for every one of those. I’m trying to teach them that they have a purpose here and they’re living beings.”
Freddie especially enjoys teaching to younger audiences because she feels that it can have a greater effect when kids haven’t yet been influenced by the stereotypes that spiders are scary.
With adults, Winnifred explained that it can sometimes be harder for them to overcome their fears, because they have been living with them for their entire lives.
“I know that I probably won’t be able to change their fear completely…but I could still try to change their perspective,” Freddie said. “Like, instead of calling the exterminator or killing it, how about you just kind of leave it alone? So, maybe I could change their actions, but not exactly their emotions.”
In the classes, Freddie interviews her students and asks them to explain why they are afraid of spiders. But aside from them looking scary and the potential of being bitten by one, most people don’t have a specific reason for their fear.
“So I learned about their fear and now I know what I have to work on with them,” Freddie explained. “Maybe there’s no known reason. Maybe they just weren’t informed.”
Freddie’s main goal is to teach people that tarantulas have a purpose. In fact, she likes to think of them as nature’s exterminators.
“A lot of spiders aren’t going to hurt you. They’re not going to do anything but eat all the bugs in your house,” Winnifred commented. “So I just try to think of it as, well: ‘Hey, you have a free exterminator!’ You don’t need to pay for anything. Just have your house, but don’t kill your house spiders.”
Freddie is hoping to further expand her outreach to the local library, birthday parties, and other events. She even has business cards and is willing to teach anyone who is interested.
Along with her classes, Freddie runs a website called SpiderGirl.net where she uploads videos of Feeding Fridays, Tarantula Tuesdays, and more.
For the past two years, Freddie has attended and spoken at the Invertebrates in Education and Conservation Conference (IECC) in Tucson, Arizona. The first year, Freddie had a board and got to introduce people to Rosie and talk about her interests and was awarded the Steve Prchal scholarship, which recognizes young environmental educators.
For her second time at the conference this summer, Freddie presented a PowerPoint, which she enjoyed much more.
At the conference, Winnifred has been able to meet and connect with many others who share her same passion, but her biggest inspiration is Linda Rayor, an arachnologist at Cornell University.
Freddie was first inspired by Rayor after watching her in a video called “50 Shades of Arachnids,” which mainly discussed the tarantula’s mating season. After seeing this, Freddie knew that she needed to start spreading her message to a wider audience.
Freddie hopes to someday attend Cornell and later become a professor, teaching spider biology courses and following in the footsteps of Rayor, to continue her legacy.
Winnifred admits that she doesn’t know everything about tarantulas, though she may be coming close. But, being able to do research is the fun part, because she gets to learn more.
Overall, Freddie is spreading a simple message: Tarantula’s have a purpose on the planet, just like everything else.
Her goals are ambitious, but they are realistic. Freddie knows that she can’t eradicate everyone’s fears, but she can at least hope that her teaching helps them appreciate spiders more.
“My hope for Freddie is that she always gets do what she loves,” Mrs. Wolfe concluded. “As a teacher, I am inspired by a kid who will never have to work a day in her life because she’ll have the opportunity to always do what she loves and it’ll never feel like work.