Kristina Pagulayan didn’t need a workout. She just needed to walk among the spiders.

She agreed, reluctantly, to take her daughter, Gjelina, 4, to the Butterfly Pavilion’s Spiders Around the World exhibition on a Saturday morning. The crux is the Spider Zone, a room that allows guests to walk among hundreds of web weavers without glass barriers — or anything else — separating them from the spiders. Gjelina loves spiders because her father, Wilbert, loves spiders. Gjelina ran around, squealing, and put her face as close to them as her mom would allow. Pagulayan’s heart rate, meanwhile, hammered at 122 beats per minute.

“I’m trembling right now,” she said.

Pagulayan’s terror is exactly why the Butterfly Pavilion in Westminster created the Spider Zone, a room inspired by its famous walk

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