How This College Graduate Kills A Spider

True story: tonight I was sitting here, starting to write this post when I looked innocently to my left and saw a minuscule tan spider on my down comforter. Me being me, I froze while the phrase "Oh shit" went through my mind many times. All I had on my bed with me were not optimal spider-killing items: a water bottle, an iPhone, the Tuesday pill box. I had no shoe, no tissue.

"Rosie," I hissed at my cat, "go get me a tissue!!" She half looked up from her food bowl and looked at me like I was an idiot. "Okay then, come over here and kill it. You're the cat, that's your job." She went back to eating. "Okay," I whispered to myself so as not to startle the spider, lest it run right towards me, "you're a college graduate. You can figure this out." I looked around again. Nothing came to me. Then I noticed a different water bottle on the floor with half an inch of water in it. If I could scoop the spider into the bottle and put the lid on it, it would be trapped and drowned, and I would have no spider guts on my down comforter. 

So I picked up the bottle and silently, slowly unscrewed the lid. Then, with as little motion as I could, I moved my pill box, laptop, water bottle, and phone out the possible running path of the spider, if I missed getting it into the bottle. It was a long shot; the bottle neck wasn't very wide. I sat there for a few minutes to psych myself up. I decided I could have a better chance of success if I was at a different angle. So I eased slowly off my bed. The spider didn't move. 

Rosie shook out her mane. She was done with her before-bed feeding. "Go kill that spider!" I told her. She just looked at me and sat there. Then a thought entered my head. It wasn't to get a tissue or a shoe and kill it, it was get my hair spray and spray it. Maybe then it would be stiff and I'd be able to get it in the bottle. So I went into the bathroom and got my hairspray. Just then I heard a door open upstair. It was my dad.

"Hey dad," I called up, "there's a spider on my bed... do you think if I spray it with hairspray it'll kill it?" 

He laughed. "Why don't you just squash it with a shoe?"

"I don't want to get spider guts on my down comforter. I'd rather have hairspray than spider guts."

He came downstairs and pulled a tissue out of this pocket and squished the spider in it. He then smiled at me like I was still his adorable little five-year old daughter. Then he went back upstairs. I put the hairspray away. 

A few minutes later Rosie jumped on my bed and sniffed around where the spider had been. "Oh sure. now you come up here," I said to her. She looked at me spitefully and curled up right in the middle. Sometimes it pays off in unexpected ways to still live with your parents.