Just as I was cleaning up the breakfast room after our leisurely breakfast, this morning, I was rather surprised to see a middling-sized spider scuttling across the floor. Wondered where he had come from, but felt I'd rather he not be where he was.

So I asked my husband, who was standing nearby in the kitchen, reading a news item out to me, whether he wouldn't mind removing the spider. Knowing full well how he felt about ousting any creature from the house into the fatal cold of a January morning.

Obligingly, my husband enfolded the spider within a soft, clean tissue and gently transported it. To his workshop, down in the basement. Free to wander where fancy takes it, in pursuit of life, forage and liberty.