Not Very Itsy-Bitsy Spider
Wednesday morning when I got up there was a spider with the leg-span of a quarter in my bathtub. I wasn't sure what to do about it, and didn't have much time before I had to leave for work. It turned out it was taken care of eventually.
I live on the third floor and my building is pretty old. It takes a long time for hot water to get up to one of the sink spigots in the apartment. I've developed a strategy to speed things up. I run the hot water spigot in the bathtub. This moves the greatest quantity of water to the apartment and gets hot water to the other spigots more quickly.
So Wednesday morning I turned on the hot water spigot in the tub to get hot water to the bathroom sink so I could shave. I assumed that the spider would climb the side of the tub to escape the water. It didn't. I realised too late that the creature couldn't climb up the side. As soon as the warm water touched the spider it sort of wilted and floated away. Eventually it was sucked down the drain, which was a bit of a push because the spider was so big. The body was just barely smaller than one of the holes in the drain cover, so the legs got bent at seemingly impossible angles to go through.
I felt a little bad.
Thursday morning it was back. I swear that was the same spider. I had just shaved the day before so I didn't need any hot water this time, and I didn't want to try and drown it again. I decided that if the spider was still there when I got home from work that afternoon, I would capture it somehow and put it outside.
I guess I was counting on the thing not being able to climb out of the tub. I pulled the shower curtain liner out so it hung outside the tub, so it couldn't climb up that.
Now I'm glad I didn't think too much about it, because the idea of that spider loose in my apartment kinda gives me the creeps.
Sure enough, when I got home from work that afternoon, the spider was still chillin' in my tub. I trapped it in a high-ball glass with a credit card offer, I took it to an open, uscreened window in the stairwell outside my apartment, and I dropped it outside.
It's in God's hands now.