Genocidal Tendencies

As with all sensible people, I am scared of spiders. Anyone that snorts ‘they are more scared of you than you are of them’, is quite frankly underestimating the level of fear that a human is capable of. We have created the technology to push ourselves beyond our planet’s atmosphere, shedding the chains of gravity and alighting on a lump of orbiting rock 238,857 miles from the nearest Tesco, are they honestly suggesting that our minds are incapable of competing? I’m not convinced.

The trouble with warm weather is that windows are flung open and forgotten about. You may as well advertise your property as an arachnid guest house. A few weeks ago I was sat on my sofa when a spider the size of a baby’s fist strutted in, posturing peacock-like.
“Alright” it said, nodding at my housemate and I.
“F***ing hell!” I yelped, my feet shattering the sound-barrier as they flew underneath me.
“What?” said my housemate.
Dribbling, I gesticulated at the cocky crawler.
“Oh don’t be a pussy” she said, popped a glass over it and slid a sheet of paper underneath. This is a popular method of catching a spider, placing a glass over it, sliding a piece of card beneath then taking it outside and disposing of it. That is, sliding a piece of card. Not paper. Card is rigid. Paper is not.

I smelled danger.

No sooner had she raised the glass that the paper buckled and the spider burst forth, shaking it’s fists and running directly…at…me.

“I’m coming for you!” it yelled, eyes burning with fires of hate fanned by self-loathing.

I knew I had to act, else I live out my days being steadily drained of life, trussed up in the rafters of our garage. I raised a Pythonesque foot high, and brought it down upon its charging form. I collapsed back on the sofa, and wept.

Ok I didn’t weep, but I did pant a bit. This experience was a book-token compared to the white-hot-poker-to-the-eye fright that yesterday morning brought me however, when, having stepped out of the shower I toweled myself off and pulled on my dressing-gown...

Something tickled my jawline, just below my ear.

I looked in the mirror.

A spider was sat on my shoulder stretching its arms and rubbing the sleep out of its eight-eyes.

“Morning” it said.

Now I have considered how to accurately represent the noise I made, however I have found myself at a loss. It wasn’t really high-pitched enough to qualify as a squeal or a scream, but it wasn’t deep enough to be a yell or a shout. It was essentially the noise you make if your jaw drops, your vocal folds tense and all the air in your body rushes out within half a second. Basically, “UH!” laced with more surprise than if Richard Dawkins found himself at the pearly gates.

My arms flailed and I swiped my towel at my shoulder with one hand whilst trying to shed the dressing gown with the other. With an audible ‘ptt’ the spider fell to the floor tiles and I stood pressed against the wall waiting for it to make its move. But it didn’t, it just sat there. Plotting. Time was clearly of the essence, so I opened the door and padded pathetically into the living room where a recently roused housemate was perched.

“What’s going on?” she said before cocking her head slightly to one side as a school nurse may do when asking ‘do you want me to call your mummy?’, and added “was it a spider?”

Nodding I pointed into the bathroom and in she went, a yawning Beowulf heading to the hills to do battle with a scuttling Grendel. I remain in her debt.

To exist in a world riddled with eight-legged peril is tricky. In the past I have purchased a battery-powered spider catcher, a sort of tubular vacuum cleaner, the idea of which being that you point the tube at the offending creature, press a button and an integrated fan sucks it off the wall and into a tube. You can then dispose of it outside, ‘humanely’. The trouble is, the fan was so feeble all it would succeed in doing is messing up the spider’s hair, which just pisses it off so it runs at you like a psychopath. This didn’t quite match the high-hope I had of it flying from the wall and landing headfirst on a honed steel fan, dicing it to marmite like a gremlin in a liquidizer. I have since bought one with a sliding trapdoor which has proved slightly more successful, although invariably a spindly leg gets caught by the mechanism and the horror contained within starts pushing the door open like a Jehovah’s Witness.

More afraid of me than I am of them?

"Doubtful" I yell, as an army of arachnids chase me over the horizon like the Pied Piper on a bad day, "very doubtful".