"Come into my parlor..."

I'm worried about my spider.

Okay, a little background. I have a very Buddhist dislike of unnecessary killing. I'm one of those people who gently scoops up creepy-crawlies and takes them outside, rather than screaming and stomping or swatting. (And they never even say thank you. I've even been peed on for my trouble. By a baby snake. Nice. Hee.) Oh sure, there are things I kill--mosquitos, fleas, ticks, roaches, flies--but for the most part, I'm very live and let live with the animal kingdom. I've even been known to humanely trap rats, and relocate them outside of town. I'm a little nutty, to be sure. I think I owned a slaughterhouse in a past life, and am now required in this life to be extra nice to all living things.

At any rate, I've never minded a few little house spiders hanging out. In my old house, they were in pretty much every window. Hey, they catch mosquitoes and flies, so they're okay in my book. I used to have a beautiful big garden spider who built an elaborate web each night between my front porch posts, in front of the porch light. I thought that was quite clever of him. When I'd come home late, after the web was built, I'd limbo underneath it to keep from tearing it down before he'd had dinner. My neighbors must have thought I was crazy. For the first several months in my new house, there were no spiders at all, but a few weeks ago, one showed up in the corner of my bathroom ceiling, over the tub. What an odd place, I thought. Maybe he likes to take a steam. Or maybe he's a Peeping Tom spider. Eww...the spider watches me take showers. That's kind of icky. But he did catch one very large fly a while back, so he's good with me. Since then, though, I don't see him catching much. There just don't seem to be as many bugs getting into this house as the old one. (Maybe because the floors and walls actually meet. But that's a story for another time.) So, I feel bad for my voyeuristic, possibly malnourished spider. What the hell is wrong with me?!?