Trapped spider

It's hard to warm up to a spider. They are vicious and sneaky. Their method of gathering food is gruesome.

However, they are just trying to make a go of it in a difficult world and using the tools they were given by nature.

The deaths they deal do come fairly quickly and probably after the initial struggle and the horror of the penetrating fangs, the paralyzing solution that is injected dulls the victim's senses.

Yesterday I was in the basement and noticed a grayish spider--the type that often makes a milky-colored triangular web at the corners of basement windows--in one side of the utility sink. It was trying to scale the wall but failing every time. The surface was just too slippery.

I hung a towel over the side and let it droop to the floor of the sink thinking the spider would find it and escape. A few hours later I checked and to my amazement the spider was still in the sink. At that point, I coaxed it onto the back of a blue-line pad and set it on top of the sink.

Next trip to the basement I checked and this time found the spider in the other side of sink. Again I removed it *carefully* and put it on the floor. It sat for a moment and then began ambling off toward the wall rather slowly. At that moment, it dawned on me this little beast probably was near the end of its life.

A few weeks earlier my wife had cleaned the window above the utility sink and there had been some triangular webs there. Probably this spider was displaced and no longer had the energy to start over. Most likely it was a female, and she was probably just too old.

Maybe she entered the sink in the first place in an attempt to find some water.

It was a sad realization and a sad moment, even though this diminutive killing machine had no doubt dispatched scores even hundreds of creatures in her time without feeling a single pang of regret.

But I suppose my reaction demonstrates the sort of empathy that makes us human.