Along Came A Spider And Learned Helplessness

Often times the authorities have said "Don't do X yourself but leave it to the authorities to handle it."

This often leads to absurd results, such as this one: Troy woman: I found poisonous spider in Walmart grapes

So this lady finds a black widow spider in a package of grapes she brought home.

So yes, she actually called 911 to get the authorities involved:

Ariel Jackson said she was washing grapes purchased at a Walmart Supercenter in Troy when she discovered a black widow spider inside the packaging.

Jackson told WWJ 950 that she quickly shut the package and called 911.

But when she told a dispatcher that she had found a poisonous arachnid in her fruit, Jackson said the dispatcher told her to kill the insect herself.

"He kind of just paused and was like, ‘kill it’ and I was like ‘you want me to kill it? You’re not going to send anyone over?’ This is a poisonous spider and he’s like, ‘yeah, just kill it and throw it away," CBS Radio reported.

Her boyfriend and brother eventually killed the spider,

I'm sorry but it really shouldn't take a call to the police for someone to kill a spider.

Ye old shoe should suffice, a shovel if you need more distance, or if situation and distance permits, and if it's a really big spider, a flamethrower should do nicely (just not in and around the house, Ok?).

It's a very sad state of affairs when people have been so conditioned that they would expect they need a police response to kill a spider.

Indeed, in chewing this over a little more, a police response is probably the very opposite of what is needed these days given the negative climate that has been drummed up regarding police. You can imagine the protests if an officer killed the spider. After all, Black Widows' Lives Matter.