A moral dilemma

I am looking up a word in the Oxford English Dictionary when I see, out of the corner of my eye, a spider, rodent-sized, skittering across the tiles towards me and I leap on top of the table.  Dense-legged, bulbous-bodied, Antipodean, she casts thick shadows on the floor and she’s coming at a sprint.  Doubtless she’s some refugee from tropic climes who, nesting in a box of fragrant spices packed in some hot-aired foreign wharf, was shipped around the world to berth in blustery Dublin Bay and stretched her legs upon the gang plank, then stowed away beneath a sailor’s ironed cuff and jaunted with him to the early bar, got all het up on liquor fumes and ran away.  She hasn’t eaten in many days, a pendulum of poison sways udderlike beneath her heavy frame and I sense she wants to deposit this load into the nearest living flesh that she can see.  Which is me.  I pray she can’t negotiate the table’s varnished legs and cast about for some reprieve.  She stops dead in her tracks, a foot away, crouched, poised to strike.  I wonder how high she can jump.  

I would say it was even bigger than this in the flesh.  And it had beady little eyes.

    

This flat is a haven for spiders.  They Tarzan through the living room on delicate silken fronds, weave silvery webs between legs of chairs and nurse sacs of eggs in gloomy corners and I never so much as grumble or aim the hoover in their direction.  I tolerate their skittish presence in each undusted cranny of the room, wiping the threads from my face each time I nose through invisible webs in my search for a book.  All this by way of explanation that I am no arachnophobe, but that, cripes, this monster perched beneath me as I quaver on the coffee table is in an altogether different league.  I cannot contemplate cohabitation with this killer, so, slowly, gingerly - God forbid I should antagonise it - I crouch and slide the dictionary towards me.  Hoist it in an overheaded grip, and think to myself, thank heavens I’ve lugged this tome from flat to flat instead of modernising with a CD-Rom.    I must have sensed this day would come, its hulking mass a murder weapon in the making.  And then I lean over the lip of the table and …

I know it's lame, but I love my dictionary so I had to get a picture of the exact one.  It's very weighty and very informative - perfect for killing spiders. 

But, wait.  My internal moral compass starts to blare.  You cannot kill this beastie just because you are afraid.  You lentil-eating hypocrite, you leather-shunning fraud.  You should trap her gently in a cup, release her in the countryside, feed her with pickles and find her a mate.  The spider senses my internal disarray and makes a dash for it.  I panic, drop the book and feel the dull, vaguely satisfying thud as spider splats upon the floor beneath 10,000 empty words. 

I can’t say I shed a tear as I deposited the mangled, leggy corpse into the bin.  But I did take a moment to reflect, albeit with a wry little grin, that according to all I profess to believe in, the crime I’ve committed is equal to eating a burger.  Or is it?  Does a spider equal a cow?  Is a dog or a pig more worthy?  Why will we munch on the breast of a chicken but curdle our lips at the thought of its foot in our mouths?  Why are pigs safe in Israel and cows worshipped in India and horses fair game for eating in France?  Why won’t we sample a tableau of grubs, but relish the mouldy, the smelly, the rank when it comes to a cheese?  And when did eating a meal become more complex than an algorithm?