Yamu said:
I'm usually content to live and let live. Maybe I was a Buddhist in a former life or something-- killing anything I don't absolutely have to always puts a serious damper on my day and makes me feel like I'm compromising my principles. (Of course, living with two women as I do, one of whom is the sole arbiter of my sex life and peace of mind, I tend to compromise my principles more often than I'd like. In general, I still try to put them out or let them "accidentally escape," but any highly venomous insects in high-traffic areas of the house, I unfortunately don't feel licensed to take a chance on).
The exceptions are parasites and the "dirty" bugs-- roaches and flies, mostly-- which can be rationalized as self-defense. Also, for reasons I've never quite understood, the prospect of an ant invasion will swell a hatred in me that little else can match. Maybe their matriarchal communist-totalitarian way of life just clashes too deeply with my 'murican-schooled thought processes, who knows? Outside of my home, I'm fine with laying down a line of cinnamon to establish boundaries and letting them scurry off on their merry way, but once I find them in my space, it's go time. On more than one occasion, I've flipped all the furniture in a room and spent a painstaking span of time squashing them one-by-one. National Geographic has shown me just what sort of mercy they extend to intruders in their territory, so I never feel too bad.
Good stuff. That reminded me of a couple stories from my childhood, or just "younger years" related to bugs and family...
When I was maybe 6 years old, part of my "daily play" was literally being instructed to get on my bicycle, and ride around the neighborhood a few times with my sister before coming back. It was literally conducted like a chore: "Do 3 laps or you can't come back". One such day of going out and riding around, my sister and I stopped at one particular driveway, because this neighbor ALWAYS obstructed the sidewalk with their vehicle, so we had to cautiously stop riding, look both ways, and walk into the street to pass this driveway. Good, responsible, kid stuff! =) While paused, I noticed a pill bug crossing the sidewalk from the street to the grass, and I fixated on it and watched it. Pill bugs were about the only kind of bug I didn't have a strong aversion to, and even enjoyed letting them crawl on me, but for some reason, I just looked at it for 10 seconds, and then ran it over with my bike wheel. My sister flew into a furious frenzy, and the rest of the way back home, she wouldn't stop bitching at me for killing "that poor and innocent rolly polly". When we got home, the first thing she did was tattle on me to our dad, blowing it out to have been me systematically torturing a peaceful little animal. Me being the absolutely honest person that I am- even back then -I didn't deny that I killed it, so I was punished immediately; essentially I was "grounded". I always resented them both for that, and even though it's trivial, I still sorta do. I can understand that there may have been some alarm at the prospect of raising a child into a sadist, and that this behavior was to be stamped out, but it wasn't the case, and in effect they ended up nurturing my sister's nature of embellishing to get her own way. Still, I DID instantly regret killing the little thing.
About the ants... MANY years later, when I was in college (maybe 19 or 20?) I was often "hired" by my family to do some form of labor around the house, which provided my loan/scholarship-dependent ass some form of income, and provided a service to my parents at a lower cost than hiring professionals. My parents paid me to dig up a section of yard so the soil could be turned over before new grass was planted, and I had them hire my best friend to join me. For one hot summer afternoon, with a couple CDs playing on repeat in a radio nearby, we dug up this section of yard. Suddenly we broke through some "hollow" ground, and there were ants EVERYWHERE!!! I mean in the blink of an eye, my shovel was crawling with them, when I accidentally stepped in the (now sinking) hole, my leg was COVERED with them... they. were. every.where. It ended up halting our progress, because it was a RIDICULOUSLY active nest literally feet away from the house, so we had to take action to contain/exterminate them, but for a few hours, that was a scene that both fascinated and jarred me. I mean... SO MANY ants!!! @_@
For a long time, still to this day, I have only ever "heard" about the so-called "dirty" bugs, such as roaches, as you mentioned, but I hear about them OFTEN. This is because my cousin is a Food and Health Safety Inspector for establishments, and she's rather obsessed with the vermin that she refers to when having places shut down. When her family goes out for dinner, it HAS to be at a restaurant that she'd personally inspected and OKed, or by a colleague she knew had equal integrity to her own. If it wasn't, she'd point out EVERY little detail that looked "suspicious" to her husband and kid, alluding to how many rats and roaches there probably were, and which of their meals had dropping in them. It got so bad, that they'd lament to us how "it's impossible to take her anywhere" because of her obsession with vermin. She's right, but she also goes overboard. I love to cook, and I have my own OCD so I'm quite cleanly while I do it, but she will find something to harp on ME about when I'm preparing food! I thought it very strange that when I was cooking dinner for her family I would noticed tiny bugs running around EVERY time I opened a drawer to grab a cooking utensil, of which she openly acknowledged and somehow felt unphased over. Apparently THOSE bugs (silverfish or some such) were perfectly harmless to any food preparation... Eh, I still washed those utensils before I used them.
