The Incy Wincy Spider
"The incy wincy spider went up the water spout/ down came the rain and washed the spider out/ out came the sun and dried up all the rain/ and the incy wincy spider went up the spout again."
Bet you know that nursery rhyme. If you're a parent, you probably even know the hand movements that go with it. What I didn't know is that it's a little bit of natural history.
From time to time, when I go for my shower, I find a spider already in occupation of my bathtub. Sometimes, I don't discover it until I've already turned on the water. Either way, I painstakingly remove the critter with a piece of paper, taking care not to squash it, and put it in my waste-paper bin. And that's that. Presumably it takes itself somewhere Safe for Spiderkind.
Except, at least half the time, it's back again the next day. You'd think that getting drenched, then put in a different location would teach it something. Apparently not. Now I know what the nursery rhyme was talking about:
The guy in the picture here? It beat all the records. I put it out, and it didn't even wait until the next day. By the time I was done with my shower, it was readying itself to scale Mt Bathtub.