In addition to the daily comic strip (the only online one I read, by the way) at the link to the left, they also post a daily quote. No offense Diaryland, but they're almost always better than anything on "Quoted."

Today's?

"So... did you ever wonder, do garbagemen take showers before they go to work?"

Sorry, it just hit me well today.

But has nothing to do with the title for today's entry. I am approaching an ethical dilemma. Minor to me, but life-threatening to others.

Yesterday, while entering data at this machine, I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. A thin spider (presumably male) skittering across my papers and climbing up onto the box of discs. About a centimeter diameter.

When he got up onto the open lid of the box, I gave the other side a hard flick with a finger and sent him flying over onto the couch.

Then I noticed another, larger spider sitting in the middle of her new (I hope) web on the corner of the couch. At first I panicked, as she had her legs tucked in the typical black widow fashion.

I love rattlesnakes, but have no tolerance for black widows. Their species will fare just fine without invading my space, so I do not allow them to do that.

Trespass is punishable by immediate execution.

I assume this is due to growing up in a basement bedroom that regularly had black widows in the window sills. And having part of each crop of babies (equally potent as their mother) periodically sneak inside through the small cracks in the window above my bed.

But anyway, the female biding her time on my couch was not a black widow. So I left her alone. And showed her to the wife when she got home from work.

Sometime when I was upstairs for dinner she moved off, out of sight (the spider, not the wife). This bothers me more than having her on the couch.

When I was sitting here in my sweats excising demons late Saturday night, something skittered across my toes. I don't know who or what.

So I am contemplating a massive sweep of chemical poison to clear this room of arthropods. I don't mind them living in the rolls of maps or corners of boxes, but asserting rights to this desk and the couch is pushing it.

'Course, I was pestered by a mosquito in here last night, so I realize the arachnids have value. And they couldn't be getting so big unless they were finding things to eat down here.

But the next one who crosses this desk or my toes will trigger massive retribution.