8/13/25

The rabid wolf spider made a fatal error. I’d been watching it for weeks as it built a hammock of threads and debris. I couldn’t bring myself to disturb it. I took pictures of it. It was maybe 3 centimeters across. Its bite was harmless, but not painless. Spiders can’t contract or spread rabies. Still, the name carried weight, and we gave each other distance and respect. Once, I had returned to the bathroom window only to see its shriveled skeleton, still creeping out wedged in the jamb. Then later I found it in slightly larger life abutting the frays of its molted husk. On occasion I found reason to scare or stun it, to maintain understanding of the mutual threats we posed, and it would scurry back under the sash only to resume patrol of its domain after I’d turned out the light. Tonight it made a judgment error. It ventured farther from the window than it ever had before, and it was in scooping my cat Edgar’s litter that I found a foreign deposit recessed in the depression in the back of the scooper’s handle, designed for easy storage nesting in a nook on Edgar’s litter box. This, of course, was the rabid wolf spider. A fraction of a second passed between my recognizing the creature and its plummeting to the inner rim of the toilet. I hesitated. Another few seconds and I sent it to its demise. This transgression would inevitably lead to greater trespasses. I could not afford to find out how they might manifest.