Mosquitoes and ants are annihilated immediately. They are scum, and if they didn’t have natural predators whose existence would be in jeopardy without them, I would consider them to be utterly useless as organisms. Centipedes are also killed on sight, if I’m quick enough. If I’m not, I flee the room and hide out elsewhere until I’m sure it’s completely gone.
Spiders…eh, it depends. If they’re just chilling in a far corner, they’re okay. But when they start crawling toward me, they’re gone. Ditto for when they’re directly above my bed. I am NOT having you drop onto my face, Mr. Spider. No sir.
Cute little beetles that do nothing but crawl around and wiggle their antennae are okay by me. Flying ones are a bit more unsettling, but for the most part I leave them alone unless they land directly on me.
The ones which mistakenly think I’m prey and make an attack (e.g. mosquitos) get crushed quickly.
The remainder live or die based on my mood and their size & ugliness. Crickets & lady bugs tend to get put outside. Roaches & related tend to get squished.
I prefer to avoid sprays just because I hate the stench.
I picked the first option, because the only things around here for squashing are ants, flies and silverfish (yuck). Actually, for ants I’ll usually chemically burn them to death with Windex or soap. However, I don’t kill ladybugs out of principle.
Parasites automatically get the Slap of Death. Or fed to my cat. As far as I’m concerned, the only good mosquito is a dead one.
Pretty much everything else is my friend, or at least I feel bad about hurting them. When I was younger I would swim around the edges of the pool resuing drowning insects. I think baby worms are cute. When I found a dying wasp in the house, I felt sorry for it and put it in a cup with a few drops of juice so that it would have something nice to eat in its last hours. (I guess it wasn’t as dying as I thought, because the next day it was gone). However, I do feed bugs to other bugs. I like ants, and I like watching ants forage, so sometimes I dig up small things and drop them on the anthills. And I bring in flies for my cat because it’s just about the only thing that can get her to exercise. And I fed a silverworm to pet mice because I’d read that they sometimes eat bugs, and wanted to see for myself.
But, um, yeah, on the whole I’m the Crazy Bug Lady.
Wow. Right down to rescuing bugs that fell in the pool, this is me. I enjoy insects very much, and though I try to have respect for all living creatures, I think my feelings for bugs go beyond basic respect for life. I freakin’ love the little critters.
I’ll squash most bugs. Spiders I let live because they then do the dirty work of killing bugs for me.
I’m not opposed to letting a (small, harmless) spider in a web in a corner somewhere stay…but if it’s bigger then, say, a nickel, I’d remove it somehow to the outside world.
I found one living in a lamp shade the other week. that was only about the size of my pinky nail. I had to move the shade so I just let the spider fall to the floor and it scurried off somewhere.
I dunno, in my opinion spiders are useful because they kill other bugs that annoy you.
I won’t go out of my way to squash bugs. If it’s a mosquito, I’ll swat it. If it’s a fruit fly who thinks it’s fun to buzz around my face back and forth, I’ll try to kill it. If it’s crawling on me, sometimes I’ll squash it, but sometimes I’ll give it the finger flick to the bug’s ass fall of death.
I’m not actually sure if bugs fall to their death or not.
Usually if I’m outside, it’s live and let live for me. In my own house, I’ll squash if I spot it near enough.
I don’t deliberately kill anything. Not for any superstitious reason but because life is short and I don’t like the way it makes me feel to interfer with it. Doesn’t feel like my place to make decisions of life and death.
That said I have taken cats to be euthanized when their quality of life flounders. And I think I could work the courage up to do a mercy killing if it needed doing.
Fortunately I live with someone who grew up on a farm and is able to do those distasteful acts when he’s called upon.
Depends on the definition of “squash.” If the insect is completely, 100% in my power to live or die, and it has done nothing to harm me or my family, I go through rather extreme contrivances to make sure it lives.
On the other hand, any insect that has harmed me or my family must die. I will hunt it down until it is dead.
Out of doors, I live and let live. Indoors: if it’s a wasp, I zap it with a zapper that looks like a tennis racquet. If it’s a mosquito, I smash it. Crane flies I usually zap because if I try to remove it, the legs and wings usually fall off. Flies, I can zap or ignore, depending on how annoying they are.
My MO in the house is to ignore or evict spiders and house centipedes (they’re predators of real pests, even if I’d rather they not crawl on me). I evict moths, stinkbugs, and beetles (they’re generally sturdy enough to survive live capture). I kill flies, mosquitoes, gnats, ticks, etc., and would kill a roach if ever I saw one (they’re all truly annoying pests). I’ll generally squash ants, figuring that if I don’t they’ll either come back (if they recontact their nest) or die anyway (if they don’t).
If it’s in the house, I almost always squash them. After all, it’s not like they’re near extinction. Occasionally I’ll remove a spider rather than kill it.
This is why I catch bugs instead of squashing them. I suck them up in a bug gun. It’s actually a kid’s toy that’s meant to watch the bugs. But it has a weak vacuum that gets the bug to go into a chamber so I can knock it into a ziploc plastic bag.
The plastic bag sits around with the bug gun for a while until I relocate them or until they’re dead.
Well. I do like small beasties, I don’t think it’s my place to go around killing them, and 99% of the time I’m a benevolent glass-and-paper sort of person, whether it’s a ladybird or a bee or a woodlouse or a monstrous gnashing arachnid. However, six years ago I lived in student housing with a biblical fruit-fly infestation. I still feel pretty vengeful about flies of all flavours and they will get the rolled-up Guardian of inter-species justice if I’m quick enough. I’m working through it. Goodamn flies.
And add me to the Childhood Volunteer Aphid Lifeguard Brigade, Malleus, Incus, Stapes!, olivesmarch4th.
Mosquito’s get swatted, although I prefer just to block their access, as I do with flies. Those glue strips for flies? Cruel and nasty).
Fruit flies are too tiny to swat, but I have no problem killing their larvae by rinsing out the trashcan with hot water and soap. All other bugs I try to catch and release outside.
Only if they sufficiently bug me. Keep out of my way and I’m all “Live and let live, maaaan!”, but cross me once too often and it’s SPLAT! or eviction; you can go the easy way or the hard way, bug. It’s all your choice.