A failure in the teamwork

For the fourth year running I'm growing some peppers on the living room windowsill, in between the succulents and the banana plant. Last year I got a decent little crop of Alma Paprika peppers and some small Chocolate Bells. The habaneros started off well but got chewed to bits before the fruits set properly. The culprit turned out to be a big green caterpillar that I only discovered after the deed was done.

There was some stiff talking afterwards. Part of the deal is that the spiders have pretty much the run of the house so long as they don't spin webs across doorways; don't using me as a jumping-off post when they're playing tig late at night when I'm watching the telly; and earn their keep by catching and eating the undesirable elements like midges, mozzies and bluebottles. I explained that as far as I'm concerned any caterpiggle scoffing the houseplants automatically qualified as an undesirable element that should be dealt with with extreme prejudice.

The message obviously hasn't got through. One of the bell peppers is being scoffed. To make matters worse, it is surrounded by a huge web spun by one of the larger female house spiders, who sits there mockingly as I try to find the perpetrator. Lazy devil. I mean, you'd think that if you lived by drinking the liquified innards of flies and woodlice then a big, easy-to-catch bag of protein would be a Godsend. But no, not a bit of it.

I know what this is about. Somebody is sulking because I ran the vacuum cleaner round the living room last Easter.