Does this make me a bad person?
Yes.
It is quite instructive for a vegetarian actually to want something to die, and be willing to kill it - usually by proxy because I am too cowardly to do it myself. There are some people who will think that I'm worse than Hitler for this propensity; many others will think that I'm making a fuss about nothing. I certainly believe that I shouldn't kill spiders, I also know that I have done so and very possibly will do so again.
It's hard to feel that smashing the odd insect really matters, but you're on dangerous ground if you consider that one thing is qualified to live but that something else is not. I think that the only time you're justified in killing something is when it's about to kill you, and despite my attavistic convictions, the average British household minibeast isn't going to do that. Killing like this is one of the small brutalisations that make us live in a horrible world with horrible people in it. But the world's a pretty violent place, with or without humanity, and in a way it feels a bit precious to want to tiptoe through this gory battlefield, patting things on the head.
We should probably try. There's a certain providence in the fall of a spider, and by drawing inept and hideous pictures of them, maybe I will inure myself to their vile anatomies. Maybe I'll feel the love.
Failing that, I hear conkers are a good natural spider repellent. I'll pin my hopes on that.
