When I first saw him he was on the edge of the tub behind the faucet. I thought it was a speck of dirt at first, but then I saw its legs. I didn’t have a tissue or anything to catch it with while I was in the shower, so I went back to washing myself and figured he will crawl away. I got distracted and forgot about him. And then I saw him in the water floating on the surface, his legs kicking helplessly. I don’t know why I wasn’t more alarmed, but somehow I got distracted again and then, when I looked back, I knew that he was dead because of the way that his eight legs were curled in towards his body. I was sad when I saw him dead like this. I don’t usually have sympathy for spiders. Whenever I see them, I immediately think of how to kill or capture them. I have ideas in my head about spiders biting people. But seeing this dead spider floating on the surface of the bathwater with his eight legs curled in towards his body, I felt sad. I wondered what had happened. The spider was on the rim of the bathtub, still very alive. He could have crawled anywhere—down the side of the tub and onto the floor and then up the wall and out the window and back outside to spin who knows how many more webs. But somehow he got into the water I didn’t watch this happen, so I don’t know. Surely the spider did not willingly decide to crawl down into the water. Maybe he didn’t know any better. He could have crawled one way down the side of the tub onto the dry floor. But he chose to crawl down the other way and into the water.He must have been scared when he found himself suddenly a float in the ocean of bath water. How much did he struggle before the water filled his lungs and drowned him? He had no family with him. Probably no spider society would remember him. He had no idea he would die today. Even as he was on the edge of the tub, he didn’t know that he would die. I don’t even know if spiders are capable of knowing that they will die. This small death just seems so sad and lonely to me. I finished my shower and stepped out of the tub. I didn’t know what to do about the little small dead spider still floating on the surface of the water. I thought about going to get a spoon to scoop him out. Then I realized that he was dead and he couldn’t possibly bite me. So I reached into the water with my hand and scooped up underneath him. I was still slightly afraid that maybe he wasn’t dead and when I lifted him out of the water he would come back to life and crawl along my hand, but I scooped him up anyway. And he didn’t move. He just lay there lifeless with his legs curled in towards his body. And I held them there for a second and looked at him, a creature of a kind for which I usually have no sympathy.I opened the seat of the toilet and dropped him in the water. He sunk slowly down to the bottom and just lay there. Spiders are not supposed to have their legs curled into their bodies. They’re not supposed to sink to the bottom of water. The only time they do either of those things is when they’re dead. And then they’re not spiders anymore. Then they’re just matter that hasn’t yet decayed. Their spider souls have gone on somewhere else.