“Charlotte’s Web” did nothing to persuade me. I don’t like spiders. They’re creepy, and they bite. Two things I don’t appreciate in a home invader.

And I appreciate them even less at the gym.

Even L.A. is cold at 6:30 in the morning when I pull on my running clothes and stumble out the door to the gym. And with only the barest amount of caffeine in my system, I am in no way prepared to climb on the treadmill only to be confronted with four pairs of eyes, eight legs and hypodermic needle-like fangs of death.

But there you have it. Charlotte’s little buddy – the size of a nickle and a ghoulish white – had strung herself up a little trapeze stretching from one treadmill to another. You’d think large humans huffing and talking and running and bouncing these machines would be a web-building deterrent, but no. These are hard core urban spiders, and they’re not taking any crap. They have fangs, they’re loaded and they’re not afraid to use them.

I’d gone exactly 0.02 miles when I noticed her. I slammed my palm into the emergency stop button and hopped across two machines to the far non-spider end of the row of treadmills.

“That’s right,” the spider leered at me. “Run, girly. Run.”

Then I’m pretty sure she flipped me off. Possibly with all eight legs.

It’s entirely too early for this.