Today is my first day back at work after two weeks of vacation, and there is a small problem in my office. While I was away, it seems an arachnid of a fairly reasonable size built a home in the well of one of my office windows, and apparently has no intention of vacating the premises at any point in the foreseeable future. Every time I approach him with a copy of The Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton, he seems to realize that I mean to use it to dispatch him, and abruptly and in high dudgeon hightails it into a hole in the window frame through which G.K. and I are unable to reach him.
I’m a little unsure of how to tackle this problem, although I think my options are clear. Should I choose to eschew my feminist ideals, hightail it out of here myself, and work elsewhere in the house? Should I give him an affectionate yet exceedingly pretentious literary name (like Dostoevsky or Wilde) and attempt to live peaceably with him? Most importantly, should I decide I surely can’t be expected to work under these conditions, declare Monday a wash, and retire to bed with a mug of tea and the next book in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series?
I’ve been unable thus far to come to a decision on the matter. Meanwhile, I get the feeling (although I can’t say for absolute certain, due to the large number of eyes spiders supposedly have, an exact number of which I can’t provide for you without Googling “spider eyes”, a search that will likely end with me in the fetal position under my desk) that he is staring at me and it is making me a little uncomfortable.