Heidi ~ May 8

 

I am reading Gary’s current lively May Muzurka entry, wondering about the safety of his recent spiritual quest when a small shadow floats across the blank page sitting next to my laptop, a page waiting for me to put pen to paper a method eliciting spontaneity superior to the laptop.  Word tempts me to go back and read each sentence, evaluating and changing as I go along, thus curbing the flow.

 

So, this tiny moving shadow caught my attention, not ON the paper but dangling somewhere over the kitchen counter where I am eating my oatmeal, where my open cup of tea and open package of flaxseed reside, any of which could be a receptacle should the dangling thing descend from its precarious perch. 

 

I look up at the small overhead light. There is a squiggly tiny alive creature crawling on an invisible string.

 

How did it get into my second-floor city kitchen?  Mice I can understand. But spiders?  There is minimal vegetation in sight. 

 

I don’t want it there.

 

I want to destroy it, protect home and hearth.

 

I pull the rarely-used dust mop from the furnace closet, having to move furniture to get to it, swipe across the invisible wire, once, twice, capture the innocent devil and without ceremony flush it down the toilet. 

 

Thus, having interrupted some kind of spider ecosystem and saved my home from the invasion of nature.  

 

Only slightly guilty for violently destroying a living thing, considering the alternative, had I not noticed it, would be meeting its demise  consumed along with steel cut oats.