On Spiders

I’m definitely not averse to the idea of killing bugs if they’re annoying me, but the larger the bug, the worse I feel if and when the time comes to administer capital punishment for crimes against human peace of mind.

It is for this reason that I’ve managed to live a non-violent co-existence with a few generously proportioned, yet peace-loving spiders in my immediate surroundings – there’s been the two black and yellow ones who made their large webs in two convenient corners of my veranda, the one who lived under my bathroom sink and never came out (I would only ever see it if I really craned my neck to see if it was still there, and it always was), then there was my favourite, which lived behind my bathroom mirror by day and would crawl no further than 20cms up the wall at night and then go back again, not to mention the numerous small ones that I’d let travel free-range around my two small rooms.

But one day, a new spider arrived. It was huge. And it was brave. And it was mean. It started on my curtains and then moved to the wall near the bathroom. It then walked up the bathroom doorframe, where it waited in secret to scare the living daylights out of me one night as I switched on the bathroom light. It was at this point that our short relationship began to sour.

I wanted to give it the benefit of the doubt, assuming that it just needed to find a space to settle down and feel at home. But this was not to be. After making its way into my bathroom, it started crawling everywhere. Under my watchful eye, it ventured behind my towel, over the toilet seat and up the wall. I figured that if I could see where it was, all would be ok. But then the lights went out (current nei). I went into my bedroom to get a candle and when I got back into the bathroom, the spider had moved again. And then I found it crawling down towards the floor, but it made a sudden right-hand turn and crawled behind a picture I have hanging on my bathroom wall. And it was at this point that I decided to go and get my shoe.

The thought of dealing with a half-dead spider was too much to handle, so I whacked it so hard I hurt my hand. But it was gone. An inconvenience I no longer had to deal with.

Until I noticed that it had friends. Big friends. Three other spiders surfaced on my bathroom walls that night. There was no way I was getting any sleep with those guys hanging around. Besides, I’d got a taste for the kill and the more I whacked, the easier it was.

Now I only have one spider left in my bathroom - the one behind the mirror. Although, after months of keeping the same routine, it suddenly decided to venture a little further this morning. Only time will tell whether this cold-blooded killer will feel the need to strike again!