spider

I may have killed a spider. The other day I saw two medium big spiders in the bathroom, and they made me real nervous. Then they were gone, and no one knew where. Then right now I saw a medium big spider in the other bathroom, in the tub. I saw it after I had reached in to the tub to fan out my sketchbook that is drying after being left in the rain. The bathtub is white and showed the details of the spider. It had what looked like two truncated curled front legs. But, I counted the legs on that side and there were 4. So the front things were something else, and I was scared of them. What if they were for biting me? Why was it in the bathtub? Was it stuck? Should I free it? Maybe I could rinse it away instead. But to do that I would need to get my sketchbook out of the bathtub and that would be getting close to the spider. I didn't want to smash it because I might need a spider for a resin project I might do. So I got hairspray that I bought to use as fixative for charcoal drawings, but stopped using because the scent was so strong. I thought about what I was going to do. I knew it was wrong for me to do something I think is wrong, but I looked at its mouthparts and I sprayed it and sprayed it. And it crawled away pretty slowly. Even if it wasn't getting poisoned that much hairspray should stiffen it. I was surprised it could crawl so far. The spray was choking me but I have sprayed it on my own head before (but with the windows open) so I knew I would be fine. Then I stopped spraying it and it went back to sitting still. Then I waited a bit, fussed with the top of the bottle which was coming apart, and sprayed it with a little test spray to see if it was dead. It wasn't, but this time instead of crawling it just drew in its legs. I am going to go check on it. It was upside down, curled up. The face legs were still huge. I took a picture with a shaking hand. I was somewhat surprised that I managed to get it in the frame. I guess I am a late in life arachnophobe, unless this is a one-off.

Update:

This morning I went in to look at him, and he was still curled up but flipped back over. I kicked the side of the tub to see if he moved, but he didn't and I relaxed. Then right now I wanted to get a good look at his mouth parts so I got two microscope slides and tried to scoop him up onto one using the other. Well, he reanimated and tried to drag himself with a couple of his legs so I made a loud two part noise- the first part was fear or surprise, and the second disgust- and left him. Now I feel incompetent for not being able to kill a spider yet keep it intact, guilty for making something spend so much of its life blind and poisoned, and a little scared. Well, my skin is. I'm tingly all down my legs and back and the back of my arms.