A Short and very true explanation for why I do not kill spiders…..
Just outside of an especially small town in New Mexico, down an especially long dirt driveway, there is an especially odd little house made of rocks. Inside the little rock house is a tiny bathroom with crooked tile in the shower, a toilet that runs 
forever and a leaky faucet dotted with rust. The spiders lived there. They crawled over the crooked tile and old walls. They hid behind the running toilet and foolishly tucked themselves in the sink drain beneath the dripping faucet. There long legs stretched out in lacy delicacy as they traversed the tiny moist space.
I would sit on the cold floor and gather them gently into my lap and whisper little spider stories to them. They would smile and listen and nod their gray heads as I spun tales the way they spun webs. Sometimes they would laugh politely at my jokes, though I was not sure they had grasped their meaning (sarcasm is lost on spiders you see). They would sit on my knees and look at me knowingly. I felt certain they understood me better than anyone else.
One day, one little wispy spider crawled up on my arm. I held him close to my nose so I could see him clearly. “You are not unlike me at all little friend” I said. But, we both knew that was not true. We sighed together. It is no small task for a tiny gray spider to find common ground with an eight year old girl as they sit together on a bathroom floor. We sat awhile, all silent but the running toilet and the drip dropping of the sink. Finally the spider looked me in the eyes and said “I 
promise, I will always listen to your stories.” I smiled and told him “I promise to always take you outside so my Mom won’t smash you when she comes to clean the bathroom.” Then I carefully took him and the rest of his family and set them in the hallow of an old Pinon tree that stood in the backyard of an especially odd house made of rocks that sat at the end of an especially long dirt driveway, in an especially small town in New Mexico.
G.R.
Geri Rene 