I noticed a spider in the corner of the kitchen, so I zoomed in for a closer look.

the spider

After some analysis, I decided it had to go, even though it was totally harmless. I was going to chase it into my specialty spider-catcher, consisting of a bowl and an old piece of cardstock.

the spider catcher

They never see it coming.

First, the bowl comes descending from out of the sky and encloses the target bug. Usually, the bug stays where it is on the wall, but sometimes it runs madly into the bowl itself, which makes the next step even easier. The cardstock slides between the bowl and the wall, and it’s done. The bug is totally enclosed, and I can just bring it outside.

The key feature is that I don’t kill the bug in the process, which has a number of practical consequences. First, there’s no carcass and guts splattered all over the place, which is always an unpleasant thing to clean up. Next, my capturing method has a nearly 100% success rate, whereas it’s sometimes really hard to squash a bug because they happen to be really good at avoiding being squashed. This means it’s way less frustrating to simply catch the bug, and it’s less work in the long run too.

The spider was near the ceiling, so I used a broom-type thing to chase it towards the wall where I could reach it. …but once the spider was near the door, I thought: I can just send it out the door and skip the catcher. Then, the spider got onto my broom-thing, and I thought: I can just walk outside with the spider clinging to the broom, and then shake it off.

the spider's new home

Here’s where it went all wrong: I think the spider went into the broom-thing, and I can’t really tell one way or the other. It’s some wacky proprietary cleaning device with non-standard, non-maintainable parts. I think the spider lives inside the device now, and I’m not sure what the next step is.