There was a questionnaire going around some online journalling circles not long ago. One of the questions was something like "What do you do if you see a spider on your wall?" Several journallers gave lovely harmonious answers. "Oh," went the gist of their replies, "I wish the spider well and go about my merry way, living and letting live, in the great circle of life, at one with my natural environs. Spiders are our friends, tra la!"

Now I read Charlotte's Web as faithfully as any kid, and I don't like killing God's precious creatures and all that, but when I see a big old spider climbing around my apartment, I get a paper towel and nab the scuttly little creeper. I hate walking through webs and spiders dangling in the air in my own home.

We have high ceilings, though, and sometimes I can't get to them, so I have to ask Pär to do it. Now his own attitude when it comes to bugs in the house is definitely closer to the harmonious live-and-let-live thing. He won't let me kill moths in his presence, which I must admit makes me feel very fondly toward him even while I fear for our wool clothes. But he is resigned to the fact that when I see a big spider in the house, I'm going to want it gone, dead, pronto.

Last night as we were lying in bed I saw this massive black spider scurrying across on the other side of the room where the wall joined the ceiling. It was over our bookshelves (inviolate territory!) where I couldn't reach it, so I nudged Pär to go deal with it. He sighed, got out of bed, picked up a paper towel, and walked naked to the bookshelves. Squinting without his contact lenses, he reached out and squished the spider.

"Ew," he said. "It's a slimy one. Ew ew ew."

He went to flush the spider down the toilet and wash his hands. He returned looking queasy. Gratefully, I began to frame his act in heroic terms.

"That spider was slimy because it was a pus-filled minion of evil, which, if left unchecked, would have crept its way around the walls and dropped on our faces while we slept, and --"

Pär held up his hand to cut me off mid-sentence. He shook his head solemnly. "You ordered the kill. I carried it out. I don't need to know why."

"It's this frame of mind which has resulted in terrible wars," I pointed out.

I think from now on, I'll try to drag a chair over to the wall and do my own spider killing. I can live with the blood on my own hands, but I can't live with making Pär compromise his humanity for a cause he doesn't believe in. And look at the bogus rationale I tried to feed him to justify it! Whenever you want someone killed, just say they're minions of evil and that makes it okay, right? Ahh, the war-criminal mentality at work, right in our very own home!

(I know I was right about the spider, though. I could tell it was just waiting to drop on our faces while we slept. It's a good job Pär took it out when he did.)