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I was eating breakfast this morning when I heard a tapping on the window. It was quite a loud, solid tapping, the kind of authoritative rat-tat-tat that demands attention. In this case the rat-tat-tatter got quite a lot of my attention. In fact, it got every single ounce of my attention because the authoritative ratter was no less than a six-foot tall spider.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I don’t do spiders. I don’t go out of my way to tread on them or anything, but this one did motivate me to action. It was about 8.739 seconds before I had collected every single spray product in the house, a gallon of bleach, three forty-fives, a pair of shotguns, and a double barreled RPG launcher. You may be thinking that I am exaggerating here, and you might be right – there might be a little bit of fluff on the exact amount of time to took to collect said arsenal, but it was certainly no more than 8.74 seconds. And if you’re thinking of questioning the double barreled thing, don’t forget, I live in Texas.

So, there I was, eyeball to pointy-sticky-multifaceted-ocular-sensory-thingy, when I noticed the spider was holding up a piece of paper. This was something of a doom laden moment. You see, I’ve never really completely bought into the whole “pen is mightier than the sword” thing, and I had the awful feeling this was where the argument would be settled (with me being on the less mighty side). Obviously, I was wrong otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this, so what happened?

After a moment I noticed the paper had some marks on it. It was pretty hard to read because it looked just like some spider had crawled all over the page, which clearly, it had. The inked-up spider had something of a complaint which it asked me to put out for the world. When I say “asked,” it made various gesticulations that ended up with it breaking a tree in two with it’s pincers while pointing at me. You can call me a little slow at times, but on this occasion I got the point. Or at least I got the message to avoid the point(s). So, here’s his note.

I’m Geoffrey, from the Office of Blood Sucking at the Ministry of Poisonous Araneae.

 

We at the Ministry are getting a bit fed up with the whole spiders at Halloween thing.

 

I mean, what is it with you humans that you have to vilify us? Can’t a spider go about its normal life without being branded as the very essence of evil every October? Can’t we live in peace, sucking the blood from other insects, without you lot churning out millions of plastic and rubber toys (that frankly have no resemblance to ourselves) in an effort to scare boys and girls everywhere? And do you really think that we air-breathing, eight-legged arthropods with venom filled fangs, really have a sticker on our butt that says “Made In China” like the “lifelike” models at the Halloween store? I mean, please.

 

Being a spider isn’t easy. You know that tying shoe laces thing you have to do every morning with your kids as they go to school? Well try that with eight-times the legs and three hundred kids. And don’t even get me started on the packed lunches.

 

And while we’re trying to bring our kids up right, you’re out making fun of us at the movies. The whole Ron Weasley’s fear of spiders things is just riddikulus. How can he really be scared of something furry? Or at least hairy? Is hairy that frightening that the wonderful wizarding world needs to educate your young in their phobias? And thinking of riddikulus, how come the red-headed one thinks spiders can’t roller skate? Am I really going to fall down if one of my eight legs goes in the wrong direction? Do you really think I tremble in fear at the dread seven-legged pirouette? At least JK had the good sense to slot in a perfectly normal example of your kind with Hagrid – now there’s a role model, three headed dogs, dragons, and plenty of spider action.

 

On the subject of action, Peter Parker seems to have gone over a treat. We at the Ministry are very pleased with the radiation cover story, and the conversion of one of your kind into a spider-based hero by the mere application of a red cat suit. Which, of course, goes to show that far from being the terrifying monsters you Halloweeners make us out to be, we’re really kind, lovable, law abiding (eight legged) citizens.

 

So, wise up, get that plastic spider crap off the front porch, bring out the witches and vampires, and lets just all get along.

 

Yours

Geoffrey two-pints

So, with Geoffrey’s note in mind, what’s on your porch this Halloween?

Cheers!

 

(Image courtesy of about.com)

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