Suicidal Spider

I’m caught in the web of a sad game; she wants to die, I save her.


There is a big drama going on in my bathroom. Every day I find my suicidal roomie in the bathtub trying to climb the way too slippery, enamelled walls into safety. I see her fight, get tired and sadly give up.

Here comes the problem. My arachnophobia is so severe and so bad that I even have problems with two hairy legs spreading. I rather face a Great White then a Small Black any time.

But I can’t just watch her die, I have to save her.

Dead scared I take the toilet roll and roll down about two feet of paper towards her in order to rescue her in a maneuver copying the helicopters evacuating sailors from boats in hurricanes. She climbs up on the paper and I quickly let her down on the floor to rush away.


I thought I would only have to do it once, and that the spider would learn from its mistake and stay away from the tub. How wrong I was. Four days in a row I’ve found her there when I got home from work, followed by four as dramatic as life-threatening “toilet-roll-helicopter-maneuvers”. Only for her to stupidly dive in there again the next day.

Now I’m going to let her stay there two days to teach her a lesson. Mostly because if she finds out she can’t get any food there, she might not do it again.


But also because I’m out of toilet paper.

// T.