Confessions of a Spider Killer

Okay, so maybe I read too much Dostoyevsky in my youth, but still it's been bothering me all day, this need to confess.

Yesterday, I killed the spider who bit my neck two weeks ago, then my face last week. He managed to escape to the ceiling where he was spotted.

Before I knew what was happening, I had a gold Jildor slipper in hand, and in one sweeping movement that would have made Mickey Mantle proud, I clobbered the sucker.

As the spider quickly fell to the pergo floor, I scampered to lift him up with a pair of tweezers to see if I could spot any forensics. For a minute, it felt like an audition for "CSI," but then I realized, this was not just some garden variety spider. This was an undocumented spider who must have come here to escape the heat in Arizona.

I was instantly seized with guilt. Did he not have the presumption of innocence? Was he not entitled to due process? What would I tell his next of kin? How would I find his next of kin. There was no documentation anywhere.

I could recover nothing from beside his atrophied limbs, but the uneasy feeling that his painful end could have been avoided. Two wrongs, after all, don't make a right. Just because he lunched on the bridge of my nose making it almost the size of Alaska, do I have the right to demolish him? Maybe not, but it sure felt good. For a moment, anyway, until I wondered whether karma applies to killing spiders, too.

Were it possible, I thought, I would have gotten a restraining order. I tried, but the District Attorney's office said they don't issue restraining orders to spiders. Besides, they said, I would have to file a police report which would mean going through the whole nightmare all over again, and telling of the nocturnal visitations, the bloodstains on the sheets, and the vitroilic red slash across my throat from his first bite. This was more than I could do.

Most important, the DA asked, what evidence do I have this spider is indeed the culprit who bit me? Was I willing to swear on the King James Bible that it wasn't a hickey?

I called an attorney who said he would draft a cease and desist letter, but I save those for my creditors.

You see now why I took the law into my own hands. There are easier things to prosecute than a spider.

I could never imagine myself killing anything, not until I had that gold Jildor slipper in my hot, sweaty little hand. My only consolation, however small, was that, to the best of my recollection, the spider was already dead when he hit the floor. I can recall no resistance as my slipper smacked his wretched little body, thus it may be that I didn't kill the poor thing after all He died of exhaustion..

Even so, killing a spider is hardly a crime, especially an undocumented one.

There you have it, the confession of someone of whom it has been often said "she couldn't hurt a fly." She just killed a spider!

If anyone wishes to pay their respects, the wake is Monday at a chapel soon to be announced. And, in lieu of flowers, donations may be made to Karl Rove's Web site.