The Spider
By Janette van der Vyver

Once upon a time a spider decided to make his home in the corner of my shower which was actually very clever because he was particularly hard to spot. Now I’m pretty sure it was a he, since women would generally be smarter than this … Wildlife in my house doesn’t last very long and their final resting place is usually inside my vacuum cleaner. However, since I generally bath and don’t shower and definitely don’t vacuum my shower, he must have been safe there for a while.  One morning I decided to shower and lo and behold I met Mr Spider in the corner.  Since I only noticed him after getting into the shower and being without a vacuum cleaner right that minute I made a truce with him, if he stayed in the corner I could shower happily and we wouldn’t interfere with each other. He didn’t listen; remember what I said about him being male? Perhaps he could read in my aura that I was cruel to all living creatures that weren’t of the four-footed fluffy variety. He jumped out of the corner and started looking for an escape route.  First he tried clambering higher up the wall, this would generally have been a good idea but with the wall being tiles that were now wet or moist it proved impossible for him. Eventually he discovered that too and decided that then he’d have to cross the floor which was by now largely underwater, at least at the level that the spider was. Mr Spider was in the corner furthest away from the shower door.  Had he been in the corner by the shower door or next to it, he probably would’ve reached the shower door. However, now he had to cross the perilous rushing water and human being. The closer he walked to the door, the deeper the water became for him made worse by the fact that the human was using water to make sure he didn’t reach her.  He eventually drowned, poor chap. Now it occurred to me that had he just stayed in the corner where the water didn’t reach he would have survived. He died because he insisted on trying to escape a situation he mistakenly judged as perilous … okay, being in my house is perilous to any insect but it wasn’t for him right that minute. The moral of the story? Sometimes trying to get out of a bad situation can leave you more fucked than you were in the first place!