The moral imperative of spiders.

 They're attacking and this time in no small number. It seems that with the decline of temperature comes the increase of population among the arachnid community besieging our house.

 I have never been a friend of these miniature beasts. I have never opted to release them back into the wild from which they came. I have always took one of two actions: kill or ignore. More often than usual I ignore them as they don't provoke aggression in their webs but today has been a different story altogether, my friends.

 I have been suffering a cold for a couple of days now, and you could say that tension is running as high as the as the pitch of the fever. No moments seems to pass between thumping headaches and sneeze attacks, but in the smallest respite of sleep. It had been a short time after one of those peaceful yet brief periods that I was alarmed to discover the octo-offender. My brother came in from another strange excursion into the world and had begun speaking to the creature as if he knew it from a previous adventure. He grabbed me from my chair and at once challenged me to defeat it.

I could not be bothered. So, he went back to chatting with the spider and I went back to playing bubble shooter because these are the pillars of our lives. Still, in the back of my mind I wondered what unique characteristics made this spider so remarkable to my sibling. Spiders inhabit nearly every room of this building, in fact there is one crawling its way up the wall next to me as I type this. So I proceeded to insert myself into the one-sided conversation and investigate the case further.

This beast, dear reader, was of no small consequence. It was indeed a formidable looking thing. I'm very sorry to say that photographic evidence does not exist as swift action was required if we were to survive the night. In my haste all prospects of the future escaped me and animal instinct kicked in. Sorry. If you require a visual reference simply imagine your hand with three more fingers and filled with venom sticking to the wall minding its own business.

 I crushed its spindly body with my shoe and thought nothing more of it. A victory for all mankind and no small achievement, but now a simple trifle. One for the books but no longer a threat, I returned to my seat after brushing its corpse from my sole.

 Of course, my dear brother mumbled a small complaint about how I should have removed it from its nest and sent it back out to the world at large. I understand this line of thinking, but it should be noted that its life would not have been any better out there. It might have lived well on the blood of other small creatures but it would have died soon enough slowly curling its legs toward its center and rotting away in the wilds of our front yard. Its life a pain to sustain and its many victims passing in horror without escape. I gave it the quick way out without pain or suspense. We should all be so lucky, I think.

 Sure it meant no harm to us, it posed no serious threat, but what of the future? What do you do when you have a million of these things slowly descending from the ceiling in the middle of the night?

 So, my course of action was clearly not the one everyone would take, but in the end I think the best. Indeed there is no more worry of spiders any longer and I would sacrifice a billion of them for a good night's sleep, but that seems not to be the  case for this night. I can not sleep until the nyquil kicks in and so I thought I would regale you with a tale of spiders and intrigue.

Good night.