Another True Story: Went to stay with roommate’s parents for a weekend while we were in college. Parents had a lake/pond behind the house with a little fishing dock. We decide to go out there to catch catfish and drink beers. I caught one and was immediately horrified, burst into tears, and refused to pick up a fishing pole ever since. My friends still make fun of me for this. We were catching and releasing. That fish was out of the water for less than a minute, but I felt terrible for it. It had been innocently swimming around, minding its own fishy business when it thought it spotted a yummy wormy treat but no. It was just me, trying to kill it. For my own entertainment. Poor fishy. :o
That said, I think nothing of eating fish. I just can’t kill it myself or watch it be killed by someone else. Someone brings me a freshly dead fish? I’m frying that fucker right up.
When I was a kid we spent almost all of our summer weekends at the family cabin. I could fish and bait my own hook AND take the fish off the hook by myself by the time I was 5 or 6. I’d dig for my own worms too. Never bothered me then, but now it does. I don’t fish much anymore - the whole process bothers me.
We were always told that fish don’t feel pain but I don’t believe that at all.
Seems like that comment has been eating at you for quite while.
I try really hard not to harm chordates. Arthropods get a courtesy avoidance in most cases. Exceptions: spiders are always on thin ice if they’re in the house, and mosquitoes are murdered on sight. And crabs, of course, are food at any opportunity.
I was traveling through Texas on a small highway near Amarillo when I came across a turtle migration of some kind. They were getting crushed all over the highway. I went about a mile past and then decided to come back and save as many as I could by picking them up and moving them across the highway. Yesterday I watched a bee for about 15 minutes that was walking around in some kind of distress. I couldn’t decide to put it out of its misery or just walk away. It soon became clear he was dying so I stepped on him.
IMHO it all goes to intent. If you intend to be a rat bastard bug killer just for the sake of training for some future evil hopes and dreams then it’s wrong. If you accidentally step on them, no. It’s always the intent of the heart that makes something morally correct or incorrect, not the act.
My dividing line is if it is a bug that is attempting to feed on me. Biting flies, mosquitoes, ticks, no-see-ums …no mercy. House flies, eh, don’t feel to bad if I kill 'em because they are annoying. Pretty much any other insect or arachnid that finds it’s way into my house gets relocated outside or left alone. In my lawn I am likely to encounter frogs, snakes, toads, crayfish and sometimes baby turtles. I go to great lengths to avoid them when I mow. I built a little shooting range on my property with a backstop made of railroad ties, old landscaping timbers, sections of old utility poles and dirt. Immediately, all kinds of wildlife colonized it. Every time I shoot, I pound on the backstop to give the residents a heads up. Sometimes while I shoot, chipmunks will come out and stand down range and dare me to shoot them. So far I have resisted.
When I was a kid, me (and my buddies) killed a lot of birds and other small creatures with our air rifles and bows and slingshots.
I feel like I have a lot to make up for karma-wise.
I don’t kill anything if there is another way, even nasty cockroaches. I will try hard to relocate them if possible. Flies aggravate one to swat them but if I can open a door or window and they fly out then that’s better. I absolutely would not have stepped on the crabs, even if running late and would have tried to gather up as many as possible and moved them to safety. A few more minutes wouldn’t have mattered at that point.
I don’t go out of my way to kill things. I don’t like spiders, but as long as they don’t crawl on me, I leave them alone (unless they’re black widows in my house–I draw the line at poisonous spiders). I feel guilty about stepping on bugs, and do my best to avoid it (or worms, or whatever). I definitely wouldn’t have purposely mowed down a bunch of little hermit crabs.
I wonder how many ants and tiny beetles each of us has unknowingly stepped on in our lifetimes. I don’t know anyone who surveys each square of sidewalk before stepping to make sure it’s bug-free. Then again, I can’t see most bugs.
That said, I make reasonable efforts to avoid stepping on bugs or worms. Sometimes, as in after a heavy rain, worms are so thick on the sidewalk, it’s nearly impossible not to step on one, but I make the effort. And I don’t kill spiders.
I do kill mosquitos and flies, as they carry some nasty diseases.
But OP, hermit crabs are usually around 3-4 inches in diameter, aren’t they? Stepping on those seems avoidable and disgusting unless they completely covered the sidewalk.
