In case all these bothersome classes have you woefully behind in your cable watching, let me tell you what you’re missing — “Venom Week” on The Discovery Channel.

That’s correct, an entire week of shows dedicated to fangs, blood, predators and our measly attempts at antidotes. Expect plenty of intimate views revealing just how the Striped Big-as-a-Dinner-Plate Tarantula pierces the innocent chameleon’s spine, dissolves its innards with venom, then sucks down some lizard puree. Expect a steel-cage death match, where an appropriately deadly snake battles an appropriately deadly spider. (The spider wins, for anyone placing bets.)

Even expect those tender moments, when the doting mother tarantula sees her 800 offspring for the first time. Oh, the joys of motherhood.

You can’t have a creepy-crawly show without the requisite creepy-crawly man letting his favorite Cute-As-A-Button-But-Fairly-Dangerous Spider trundle across his face, poke at his eyeballs and nest in his hair.

“Ah mates, these spiders are harmless unless they’ve a craving,” says the creepy-crawly man, who has his spider out in the grass for a walk. “Now, when they bite you,” (he says this, of course, because HE HAS BEEN BITTEN — more than once), “it doesn’t feel like a wasp sting. No, no mates, it’s more like two pins in ya. Only hurts when they wiggle their fangs, to release the venom.”

Thanks for the clarification. I’m sure legions of arachnaphobes are wiping their brows, thinking, “since it only feels like two pins and not a wasp sting, I might as well purchase that Brazilian Wandering Banana Spider I’ve been so admiring.”

Speaking of the Brazilian Wandering Banana Spider, the “Venom Week” producers reached a new high with their dramatization of just how deadly these fruit lovers can be. Picture this:

A harvester, lightly covered in sweat and dirt from a long day in the banana grove, swipes his machete through one last stem. He hoists the bananas over his shoulder. The camera zooms in as he walks away; the Brazilian Wandering Banana Spider hunches a green banana, obviously pissed off.

Perhaps here the harvester ought to make mental notes.

Don’t piss off deadly spiders.

Check for deadly spiders before I shoulder the bananas.

And remember to bring my “Know Your Banana Spiders Handbook.”

A horror movie soundtrack sets the mood. The film slips into slow motion, as the unwary harvester thinks only of kicking back with a cool drink and the remote control, after he delivers one last bunch of bananas. “Little does he know this will be his last bunch of bananas ever, ha ha ha!” The Vincent Price-ish narrator brings us to the terrifying edge of our seats. We subconsciously swipe at our legs and shoulders, sure that spiders are everywhere.

Then we are the spider. We are in the bananas. We are hating the harvester’s sweaty neck. We are wanting to bite it.

The documentary narrator comes back in. “The Brazilian Wandering Banana Spider, one of the most dangerous arachnids, can leap two feet in order to bite its prey. Death is almost always instant.”

We are the spider again, still being jostled in the bananas. We are still hating the sweaty neck. We are thinking the neck would be the most excellent piece of the human body ever bitten by a Brazilian Wandering Banana Spider.

The camera becomes the spider, leaping and striking the neck. The world falls away.

With minor homage to Rescue 911, the harvester reels, his world blurry. “Death comes quickly,” assures the narrator, “but it is not painless. The deadly neurotoxins in the spider’s venom block signals to the muscles. Coordination and breathing fail. It’s only a matter of time before this unlucky man has died, alone in the banana grove.”

Thumbs up to the funky camera work; thumbs down to the Brazilian Wandering Banana Spider.

We don’t even feel any better knowing that moments after the bite, the harvester squashed the spider into oblivion.

Sure, humans are always preoccupied with punishment, but it seems so petty when the only way you’ll live to tell the tale of killing the spider who tried to kill you is if a pharmacist is following you through the grove, ready at every moment to inject the antidote.

What it comes down to is that the Brazilian Wandering Banana Spider is a nasty little bugger. Sure he eats some insects and probably has some other high-ranking role in the government of tropical beasties. Just be thankful he’s not crouching on your bananas at home.

Or maybe he is. The only location truly spider-free is Antarctica. (Which is also fairly banana-free. Coincidence? I think not.)

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Jen Hirt is a graduate student in English from Valley City, Ohio.