Dogs or cats? Beatles or Stones? Connery or Brosnan?
Here’s an easy one: spiders or flies?
It's spiders, right? Everyone hates flies. Spiders kill flies. Therefore spiders are our friends. Or so the syllogism goes.
But hold on a minute. Consider a housefly. A big inkspot bluebottle, dumb as Microsoft Vista, loudly advertising its presence with that unmistakable buzz, interrupted only by the comical thuds of its little body crashing into the window. That's right, it’s trying to get out. It doesn't want to be inside. It’s just as unhappy with the situation as you are. But while indoors, it’s easy to spot, easy to evict and easy to kill.
Now consider a spider. Silently, commando-like, it violates your home with malice and demonic intelligence, penetrating via vents or cracks or maybe sneaking a ride in your hair, no doubt excreting thousands of eggs while there ensconced. Once inside, it spins endless strands of slimy, adhesive and near-invisible webbing, ideally located for maximum inconvenience and face-enveloping potential. In very short order that gossamer grossness will fill with the disgusting, dessicated corpses of its vampirised victims, melding with your curtains as they slowly decompose.
And we say SPIDERS are our friends? Wow. For all of our supposed human sympathy with the underdog, we've really thrown in our lot in with the creepy monsters on this one. Yet remarking that you hate flies less than spiders is like streaking at a funeral; it’s guaranteed to cause upset. There are people who deeply, passionately, genocidally detest flies. And there are people who go batcrap crazy insane if they see you kill a spider.
This is why entire mythologies have sprung up to protect the excessively-legged little bastards. Oooh, kill a spider, seven years bad luck. Oooh, kill a spider, a fairy cries. Kill a spider, your testicles will shrivel. Remember Robert the Bruce and the spider who never give up? Charlotte's feckin' web? We brainwash our kids to worship the hateful things. "Look, baby, a spider! See the beautiful patterns he makes! He's so clever!" And like that, another slave to arachnophilia is branded.
But killing flies… Heck, we have entire industries devoted to killing flies. There are more sprays, tapes, zappers and gizmos engineered to slaughter flies than there are liars in the Dail. Society wants you to kill flies. Government, big business, Michael O'Leary, the Pope, they're all behind you in your brave, fly-killing endeavours. I'm surprised there isn't a grant of some kind.
Look, of course I’d prefer if both species just stayed the hell away. But since they won’t, the much-maligned fly has me in his doomed, diseased corner.
Next week, brown sauce vs. ketchup.