Little Miss Muffet

Doing homework my basement ,
foregoing a delightful soiree.
When along came a spider that slid down besides me
and I scream and killed the damned bugger right away.

If it rains tomorrow, Edmontonians of a superstitious persuasion may have cause to blame me.

However, I am quite sure that the causality in the superstition that claims that killing a spider will mean rain the next day. Spiders, like other animals, seem to sense the weather and react in advance. So if spiders sense rain, they head indoors, which is when people are most likely to encounter and kill them. Spiders don't have umbrellas because they know to get out of the rain. (Well that and I'm sure that with eight legs, their feet would get all tangled.)

On a related tangent, many individuals profess to having an aversion to the sound of nails on a chalkboard. I think a far more heinous assault on the senses is the feeling of getting caught in a strand or two of a spider web.