Death Traps, Killings, and Other Ethical Issues Involving the Existence of Spiders

A Compassionate Article by Bree

Tonight I spotted the spider whose been residing in my room since Sunday. After tracking tirelessly all Sunday night and morning with my ultra-efficient spider locator - my flashlight - I believed that the spider had either found its way out of my room or starved to death and hopefully died and obliterated somewhere out of my eye sight.

Feeling confident that I was rid of any spider threats, I took to my room again with my usual frivolity and began to feel more comfortable and not on watch all the time.

Until tonight that is, when I spotted It again, in the last place I saw it: on my popcorn ceiling…just there, doing nothing…Nothing that remotely resembled dying or about to die. I don’t know why, when I shouted at it to leave, and point to the door, why the spider didn’t go. I don’t see why he couldn’t sneak out through the top of the door, crawl across the wall, and go into my sister’s room and find some place to hide in there. I don’t know why he took to haunting me for 2 days – on my fucking ceiling nonetheless.

This spider has been making circuits of my wall. Tonight, as was on Sunday, I spent hours tracking It with my spider locator flashlight across my wall, on the ceiling, up and down and around and around. And then, said spider had the audacity to breach itself into a location that I hoped it would never venture to: above my bed.

He didn’t zoom across my ceiling or my wall. No, he took his time. He’d stop, turn around, go the other way. Stop, go back, go down the wall, then up again…He crossed the corner and lingered in the crease where my wall and ceiling meet, a location which just happens to be precisely above my pillows. Slowly, the little bastard had the audacity to go down my wall, a little closer, a little closer, to the point where I could safely reach it. And that’s when I noticed how juicy he was. He looked different from the side; so 3-D, and non one-dimensional as he appeared on my ceiling. If I squished him in such close proximity to my bed, that would be a lot of guts, it may even squirt. I decided to wait for the spider to get closer to the door so I could give him, again, the option of leaving and going into someone else’s room, or dying at the hands of me.

He chose to die at the hands of me.

He reamed up the wall, above the door, and got himself into the highest corner imaginable. Still, the little shit had the balls to run in and out to taunt me. I had to devise another plan, and thankfully that plan didn’t take long to execute.

As I stood with my bedroom door open at 12:45 in the morning, lights off, flashlight on, I heard steps on the stairs. Dad, coming to bed: dad, who’s taller than me who can reach the spider and kill it and save the day!

I explained the situation to my dad. Clearly, he has a lot of paternal love for me if he decided the best decision he could make was to kill this spider for his daughter at 12:45 in the morning instead of focusing himself on getting ready for bed. Dad took my giant wad of Kleenex from my hand, and I put the spotlight on the spider, and we were ready.

Dad jumped. No spider. Jumped again. Couldn’t reach it, and established my desk chair wasn’t safe enough to stand on, and that the chairs in the hall weren’t small enough to fit through my door. Quickly he left, and returned with a stool to stand on so he could get sufficient height to kill this spider once and for all.

One, two, three, SMACK! Dad takes the Kleenex from the wall and inspects it. Not only did dad squish the spider on my wall, it then proceeded to fall from the Kleenex and almost ran away. Now began the excavation of my carpet in attempt to find the spider and kill it once and for all. Thankfully, it didn’t get far (being partially squished and all), and dad found it, squished it repeatedly between his fingers, and it died a horrible, violent death at the hands of my father, the Spider Killer.

This raises the question: must we really kill spiders so violently? Must we be so afraid of them? Well no, because in truth we harm them more than they harm us, but the thought that the spider could’ve descended upon my face as I slept and planted eggs in my skin is just awful and horrifying. I gave It a chance, and it didn’t take it, he had to die. I established it was treason for him to continue living in my room as I knew the more I stalked him with my flashlight, the angrier he got, and the more he probably plotted my demise by spider bite, or some other horrible spidery thing.

I don’t care if my punishment for the death of It is rain tomorrow. I don’t. I care about the fact that I can sleep soundly now knowing that this spider isn’t creeping on my wall. I can sleep soundly knowing that I’m a valued enough member of my family to have been helped to such an extent at such an hour.

Spiders; they’re the smallest shits I know, and the scariest things I don’t want to know.

And Megan: yes we can split Henry Cavill. Which end do you want??