Some time ago, one of the GPIO pins on WeatherPi stopped working. It was the one the tipping bucket rain gauge was attached to. I was able to move the wire to another pin, and change my program. Problem solved.

When the rain gauge stopped working again, I assumed I would need to replace the Pi. If another GPIO pin had failed, it probably meant the whole board had been damaged somehow. But before ordering a replacement, I wanted to be sure.

When I leaned WeatherPi over to have a look, I noticed the bucket seemed to be stuck. That was really odd as there's no real reason I could think of for that to be the case.

Then I forced the bucket to tip, and this is what I found.

I didn't realize the resident was at home until I poked my screwdriver in there. The frightened beast ran over the edge and escaped on a long silk thread to the ground where it immediately found a leaf to hide under.

I confess I normally will terminate spiders within my personal space with prejudice, but in this case I only felt apologetic for displacing the critter, so I let it be.

So, the bug is gone and WeatherPi is fully functional once more. I hope the spider found somewhere to build a new home. I just hope it's not back up the pole inside my rain gauge.

Now and then, a little mercy is a Thing That Works.