So, as many of you know, I have had a lot of unwanted borders living in my house at various times during my service. The most prominent were the mice that, as far as I can tell, had a serious mouse metropolis built in my walls and ceiling when I first moved into the house. They gave me quite a bit of trouble initially, as they ate, or pooped on, all of my food and spent the nights loudly scurrying around my room (presumably as they rushed to where I stored my food, or their pantry/bathroom as they saw it). After a long and bloody genocide I have finally eradicated the mouse problem using traps, poison and machetes. While all of this was going on however I had numerous other critters taking up residence in my home. The most long standing of which were definitely the spiders that moved into my bathroom. It started off as one spider building a web in one of the corners, and by the year’s end I had serious webs emanating from every nook available. Despite the grossness factor of having so many spiders in my tiny bathroom (believe me, it is rather off-putting to have all of those beady eyes staring at you while you shower), I was not particularly bothered by their existence and allowed them to continue living and thriving there. I did this not out of aversion to murdering arachnids or insects (since I have long had a standing “kill on site” order for other breeds of spiders (such as tarantulas), scorpions, and all manner of creepy multi-legged insects), but because they were useful for eliminating winged insects, and because they generally kept to themselves (unlike another breed of spider that like to wander around the room at night and climb onto my face while I am sleeping (needless to say they are on my “kill on site list”)). My affinity for the bathroom spiders was such that when a scorpion intruded on one of their nests and was menacing the spider who lived there, I came to its rescue and hit the scorpion with a hammer.
By now you may have noticed that I have been speaking of the bathroom spiders in the past tense. This is because in order to paint my bathroom, I had to “relocate” them in order to get rid of the webs that were covering much of the upper part of the walls. This process was much like that which the People’s Republic of China undertook to relocate large portions of the population of the Sichuan province in order make way for the flooding of the Yangtze that would result from the construction of Three Gorges Dam. I, like the communist party leaders, had a vision for a greater future and I was not going to be stopped by a few insignificant peasants’ homes… I mean spider’s webs. Though in my case rather than buying out peoples land, and offering them homes in newly constructed cities outside of the flood range, just burned out their webs with a flaming news paper and brushed away the charred remains. As far as I can tell most of the spiders just retreated farther back into their crevices in the roof (and will probably start rebuilding their webs once they regroup), though at least one stood its ground as the fire approached and was incinerated. In the end I have to admit that I feel kind of guilty, but progress is progress and the Peoples Republic of Stephen must continue to expand its glory.
