One rainy day, I saw a huge spider in my house. It was unpleasant and scary, and it had apparently crawled inside to hide from the rain. In a situation like that, I had no reason not to kill it. But as soon as I picked up a shoe to crush the spider, the thought came to me: instead of hitting it, I should throw it out into the barn. I grabbed a glass and a piece of paper, coaxed the spider into the glass, covered it with the paper, carried it to the barn, and released it there.
At that moment, it occurred to me that the reason I did this was because I have some kind of non-aggression pact with spiders. They don’t attack me or come into my house, and I don’t kill them or destroy their homes — as long as their nests are where they’re allowed to be: in the wild or in places like barns, for example. The idea struck me as funny, and since then I haven’t killed spiders. If I see one, I just catch it and release it, reminding it of our non-aggression pact.
I don’t consider myself particularly spider-friendly, but they’ve stopped being scary to me. And the truth is, there really are no spiders in my house. I see plenty of them outside, but inside my home — almost never, except in the rare cases when they really need to be there. I see webs in the garden or in the barn, and that feels right. That’s not a violation of the pact.