May 18, 2005
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It's A Bug's Death
Well, the exterminator came this morning, not to be mistaken for the
EX-terminator AHH-NOLD, current governator of California. I've had
the windows and doors open for much of the day and yet every corner of
the house remains permeated with the "pleasant" scent of DEET Potpourri
(whatever you do, don't buy that stuff). Ahh, the toxicity, the wondrous
carcinogeneity! At least Planty has not keeled over yet.
When the exterminator called and asked if I had any pets, I forgot to
tell him about my free-range ant farm, but I hadn't seen the little
guys in quite a while.* I must clarify it was NOT my choice
to exterminate. My landlord arranged for the evil deed to be
done. If it were up to me, I'd just leave the pests alone.
Really, why bother the insects?
Why treat them with disdain instead of according them the respect due
our fellow life forms. Sure, they may bug you from time to time
or creep you out, but who among us can say they haven't been annoyed or creeped out by
their fellow human beings occasionally? Perhaps you can recall a
time when you yourself were the one on the bugging end--the "annoying little
bugger," so to speak. Is an
exterminator called in every time to do in the "annoying bugger," whatever size
they may
actually be? No, of course not,
but we don't hesitate to blast away at our little insect
friends with our dangerously poisonous poisons all the time. And then we
expect
them to behave
nicely when we go out on a picnic or a leisurely romp through the
swamp. Why, if we just treated them nicely, they'd be
much more inclined to
leave us alone instead of invading our food supply or swarming viciously around
us in a stinging cloud, like we so clearly deserve. Maybe if we
just let the roaches in our homes
remain unsquished by foot or flyswatter, un-terminated by the
exterminator, the shackles of human oppression would be lifted and
they would feel comfortable sticking around to
have some meaningful dialogue with us. We humans could
really learn a lot from our creepy, crawly, icky arthropod buddies, if
we'd just take the time to realize that...bugs are people too
(anthropomorphically speaking, of course). I'm talking about real
dialogue here, not "Shut up, you [swear word] crickets, I'm trying to
sleep!" or "Die, foul mosquito! Die!" There'd be a lot less
stinging, biting, and bloodsucking going on if we humans would just be
civil for once. Think about it.*Plagiarism alert: I think
there was a storyline in one of Darby Conley's Get Fuzzy books
involving a free-range ant farm, but not one of the ones I've read
lately
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