For much of my adult life I've lived in upstairs apartments. Spider sightings were blissfully rare, and I never had to worry much about creepy-crawlies. Then six years ago I moved into my current home which is at ground level. And while there's not a lot of spider activity, there's more than I've been accustomed to. Much to the delight of my cats, who thrill at playing with a spider for a while before ultimately eating it then puking it up.

I don't want to kill anything, but I don't want to have to clean up cat puke either, so I invested in a box of those tiny paper Dixie cups specifically to be used for catching bugs and transporting them outside. They work great, and can be tossed afterwards so I don't risk dying from spider germs being deposited on my drinking glasses.

Today I found a weird tan spider by my cloak closet and went to get a Dixie cup so I can take him outside. After putting him in the shady part of my flower garden, I decided to count how many cups were missing so I could determine how many spiders I've saved over the years.

The answer is thirty-four.

That's thirty-four times I made the choice to not splat a spider with my shoe but instead set him free. I'd like to think that there's some future karma benefit at work here for me here... but the fact that I'm lucky enough to have a home in the first place is enough for me.