With the heat wave, critters had been increasingly been looking for relief from climate change inside the house, forcing their way inside through rubber seals and around pipe fittings from the inferno that was the forest to the cool air within. Most of them did not survive the journey, and Alan or Shelley would find them on the floor in various places: ex-cockroaches, departed centipedes, spider-angels. Shelley had a particular phobia of spiders, and would ask Alan to clean them up so she wouldn’t have to handle them; he always obliged, having no problem with the arachnids unless they decided to crawl on him (and the penalty on the books for that was death).

So when Alan found a big wolf spider, larger than a quarter, curled up on the kitchen floor, he immediately wanted to dispose of it before Shelley could see. It would just upset her, even if it was dead, so he gathered it up in a kleenex and threw it in the trash before she could see it. He had a passing thought to crushing it in his hand–to make sure it truly was dead for good and all–but the idea of wet hemolymph spider-juice between his fingers for nothing put him off, and he simply chucked it in and forgot about it.

Until that afternoon.

Opening the trash can to dispose of a granola bar wrapper revealed the wolf spider, very much alive, clinging to the inner garbage bag. And with Shelley about, Alan couldn’t squash it without raising a variety of uncomfortable questions. Not could he take his preferred way out and capture the beast for release outside. No, Alan was left hoping that Shelley didn’t see the spider in the trash as she prepared her lunch, feeling his gut clench every time she opened the trash and bracing for a scream.

She didn’t see it, but neither did the spider lay low as Alan tried to subtly encourage by dropping additional trash on top of it. It continually flaunted itself near the top of the bag, as if daring Alan to look upon what he had inadvertently wrought. When he threw away his Chinese take-out container after lunch, the spider moved right in, gingerly sampling the leftover chunks of chicken.

When Shelley excused herself to use the bathroom, Alan saw his chance and sprang into action, snatching the container from the trash and sprinting outside with it, racing against his wife’s potty break as well as that particular arachnid’s impish lack of self-preservation. It tumbled into the front garden bed along with a half-dozen chicken chunks and a sprinkling of General Tso’s sauce, while Alan secreted the container in the outside trash, Shelley hopefully none the wiser.

And indeed she wasn’t. The spider, though, learned nothing from its sojourn, as Alan learned when it reappeared the next day–this time on the ceiling.

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