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A Senseless Killing That Stunned Us All

While a whole world looked on in horror, unwilling or unable to respond.

Maria Rattray
5 min readJul 15, 2022
A sign that says No Business on a Dead Planet
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

Lifting his foot, he determinedly crushed it under his superior strength. One stomp and the dangerous beast was no more.

And then he looked around for his appreciative audience.

There was none.

All eyes were flicking between the ground, or straight ahead, tension palpable.

I walked towards him, slowly and deliberately, eyes determinedly on him.

“Why did you do that?” I asked.

“It was a spider.”

“Yes it was, but you haven’t answered my question.”

A silence hung heavily in the air.

“I’m guessing you know that what you did was wrong…”

“But it WAS a spider.”

“A dangerous one?”

“I don’t know!”

By now the audience was even more hushed, waiting, waiting…

“So let’s see. We have spent the best part of the term studying spiders, and we all know that whilst we should keep a respectful distance from some, the fact is, not one Australian in the last 40 years has been killed by a spider. NOT ONE! (I was on a roll!)

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Maria Rattray
Maria Rattray

Written by Maria Rattray

Writer, author, teacher, fun-loving poet. Trying valiantly to make the world a better place. Helping you to guide the future. Find me at: https://ponmyword.com

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