On house spiders, newspaper and window boxes

I was sleepy, pyjama-ed and climbing into bed not long ago when a fearsome sight met my eyes. Crouching in all its octopodian majesty on the wall at the foot of my bed was a house spider of epic proportions. There are, in my view, two types of house spider, the first of which I have no objection to: they are sedentary homebodies who bask away their lives in celestial havens of bouncy silk, moving only when unsuspecting bluebottles disturb their reverie and subsequently require mummification. The second type I find more perplexing. The gap-year backpackers of their species, they are errant wanderers prepared to risk their lives trekking across vast plains of wallpaper and challenging deserts of carpet, all the more formidable for their tendency to materialise out of nowhere and ability to cover four times as much ground per second as a creature of their size realistically should. The spider on my wall fell firmly into the second category. It was clearly mid-voyage, trying to decide on the route for the next leg of a journey which, for all I knew, could have led it over my pillow and into my hair. Into my throat, even, if – as is, admittedly, doubtful – the widely propagated claim about spiders crawling into open human mouths as the latter lie in slumber has any basis in fact.

Something had to be done. I generally favour humane methods of dealing with unwanted spiders, repatriation being my usual way of taking care of those that get too close for comfort. But even if I had had a glass jar and some junk mail to hand, this one was so high up the wall that any attempt to capture it came with a serious risk of it falling onto my head, which would have been a traumatic experience for all concerned. And it was late. Bed was calling. Sorry, spider, I thought. Your time has come.

The weekend newspaper was my weapon of choice. In order to avoid getting spider remnants all over something I was likely to want to read later, I carefully extracted the sports section and fashioned it into something vaguely cylindrical that could be wielded with a flick of the wrist. I gave it a test run, smacking it into the palm of my hand like a riding crop. It crumpled in the middle and bent in half. With the crucial part of the weapon flailing about like a limp wrist, the spider would survive the ordeal with nothing more than a set of bruised knees, its natural self-defence and/or revenge mechanisms nevertheless compelling it to scurry towards me at 50 mph and perhaps to launch itself at my face. Anxious to prevent such a freakish turn of events, I reinforced the weapon with the more meaty finance supplement. Happily, subsequent testing showed it to be ready for deployment. I took up my position of attack on the end of my bed, brandishing the improved weapon. Whoosh! it sliced through the air, making a breeze that stirred my hair from roots to unkempt ends, and – whack! met the wall with a slapping noise I felt sure must have woken the neighbours. Alas! I hadn't accounted for my poor sense of spacial awareness, which now came spectacularly into play. It was the fault of my subconscious, perhaps, trying to stay my hand in protest against these hitherto unnaturally sadistic urges, but in fact only managing to make everything worse. The weapon landed off-centre. It was the wall, not the target, that took the full force of the attack. Instead of the neat clout over the head that I had pictured flattening the victim to the wall in a gory but instant death, the unlucky arachnid nose-dived intact towards the carpet with starry vision, concussion and several broken legs. Its fall was broken by the corner of a picture frame, from which it dangled, stunned, hooked into place by one of its four pairs of gnarled limbs, twitching in agony, until – whack! a gentler attack this time, so as not to dislodge the picture frame. Its legs folded beneath it as it plummeted, helpless, to the floor, where it lay consumed in death throes until – whack! a final battering brought its misery to a belated end.

Throughout the proceedings my overwhelming feeling had been one of cruel determination. I had been focussed and single-minded. I had had one purpose, and one purpose only: to kill the damn thing. Yet as soon as the deed was done I was consumed by guilt. I stood over the mangled little body thinking remorsefully of Charlotte's Web, and thought, you did this. You just bludgeoned a spider to death because it was easier to dispose of it than to find it a new home. This is not okay. And resolving to never again rob an honest arachnid of its right to roam wall and carpet as and when it pleases, I picked up the corpse (with my bare hands, to atone for my sins), shrouded it in a tissue, and buried it gently in the window box.