Spiders & Karma

“Dad! Spider!” The girl screamed, too young to care whether screaming made her too girly or weak.

“Hold on.” A father, tall and sleep-worn, came into the bedroom and quickly assessed the situation. “Where is it?”

“On the window!” The girl pointed.

“Alright.” Holding a small, empty coffee mug the father walked over to the window. With a gentle tap he scooched the small arachnid into the cup, closing one calloused hand over it as he stood and moved back to the door.

“Daddy, aren’t you going to kill it?” The little girl asked, confused now at this calm in the face of evident danger.

Her father paused and turned, his face solemn. The mug still held covered in his hands. “Why? What did the spider do?”

“It...it could bite us when we sleep!”

“Will that kill us?”

“Well...maybe if it’s poisonous?”

“Do you know how to tell if it is?”

″...no.”

The father’s face stayed stoic. “What if you killed it, and you were wrong?”

The little girl bit her lip. She knew from the tone of voice this was a test, of sorts. Not the dumb ones from school but the ones about life. The ones that made the difference between whether her father was really proud of her or not. “So what are we going to do with it?”

Bending down, her father held the mug out towards her and she took a step back. “I’m going to carefully put the spider outside, so it doesn’t get accidentally stepped on and it can be closer to other bugs it can eat.”

“Why?” She looked at the mug, still terrified of the contents.

“Because - what if you were a spider?” His eyes smirked now, his face loosening up a bit.

“What??”

“Well, your mother and I didn’t have children for at least five years.” He pointed out. “During that time, your soul could have been living in this house as a spider. What if I had crushed you, and ended your spider life early?”

“I wouldn’t have liked being a spider,” she insisted, shaking her head.

“Still - this spider could be somebody’s little child. Or somebody’s mother who passed on.” The mug held out steady, and now the little girl crept towards it with less trepidation. “Would you want to kill somebody’s child or their mother?”

“No.” She agreed. “But how do you know?”

“We don’t,” he admitted. “Which is why we treat all life with respect for where it is in its journey.”

“But we eat meat.” she protested now, understanding the argument but not agreeing just yet.

“We do. Where does our meat come from?”

“Auntie Joe’s farm.”

“Right? And how does Auntie Joe treat her pigs and chickens?”

″Really nice.” The girl nodded now from experience. “We make sure they eat a lot and are super happy! Auntie Joe says that if you kill a pig when it’s upset it ruins the meat.”

“Okay. So we admit we eat the animals, but we treat them as nicely as possible, and kill them quickly without too much pain. And we only eat a few animals, right?”

“Yup! I like veggies better.” The amount of hard love and labor leading to that declaration could not be understated. The little girl had no idea how many papa pride points she had already earned.

“Now are we going to eat this spider?” He held up the mug again, and this time the little girl had come close enough nearly to touch it.

“Eww! No!”

“Then why would we kill it? We don’t know that it’s dangerous, and we don’t want to eat it - I don’t think we should.” He waited, the fate of the spider hanging in the balance. His little girl thought hard, her face scrunched up in concentration.

“We shouldn’t,” she finally agreed. He smiled and wished he could pat her head.

“Alright. Then do you want to help me pick a spot outside for this spider? Maybe it can be somebody’s little boy or girl in another life.”

“Okay!” She jumped up and down now, grapping onto his elbow and joyfully following him out.

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The little boy screamed, “Spider! Mommy, spider!”

Walking over, she shuushed the small child’s shouts. “Alright. Where is it?”

“Over here on the wall!” He pointed in horror.

Carefully, with a practiced hand, she took an empty water cup from the bedside table and scooted the spider inside, trapping it with one hand.

“Mommy, you’re not going to kill it, are you?”

Pausing, she tilted her head and considered her little one. “No. Why would I do that?”

A strange look came over the boy’s face, as if a fleeting revenant of wisdom had settled there. “I just...I don’t think spiders should be killed. That’s all. I was scared, but...it’s just a spider.” He looked at the cup with an expression of empathy, his fear suddenly switching directions as if he felt trapped inside the plastic tumbler.

With a smile, she nodded. “Me too. Let’s go find it a home outside, my little long legs.”

Relieved, the gangly little boy leapt out of his covers and followed his mother outside.

As the words of wisdom from ages ago echoed inside a little girl’s heart, her grown-up self led her child outside to find a home for another spider.