This morning, as I was leaving for work, I opened my garage and discovered a tiny lizard on the floor. I nudged it with my foot to see if it was alive, and sure enough, it scurried away. Here’s the problem: he scurried under my left front tire, and my reaction was simply to chuckle and say to myself, “Man, you sure ran into the wrong fuckin’ place!” and proceed to get into my car and back out of the garage.
Now, I don’t know for sure that I killed it. There’s a fair chance it was startled by my engine starting and ran off. But nevertheless, I didn’t care. So here’s my question: am I a bad person?
(In making your judgement, keep in mind that I’m still chuckling to myself about this incident as I write this.)
But then, in all fairness, I love lizards yet I found myself amused by the little half-eated skink corpses my cat was leaving everywhere. For a coupla summers there, no one in my house was putting on shoes without shaking them out first.
So you guys never read that “and thou shalt squashith and squishith all ye Lizards which crawl upon ye floors and creep into places which fairly beg for smooshing” part in the Bible? it’s somewhere around the middle…
man, you guys are going to freak over this post. if pestie is goin to Hell, my SO’s grandmother is headed to it’s fiery depths. she was about to hit the sack, when she noticed a gecko on the wall. what does she do, say “Hi there little fella, how ya goin?”, smile knowing a few moths are goin to bite the dust during the night?, or maybe at worst, let out a few heartfelt “Shoo!”'s???
no, that’s not what she does.
instead, she grabs a nearby can of fly-spray, and unloads on the poor little critter. I’m not sure if it drowned or suffocated. she now lives in fear of gecko retalitation, I know I would
I’d never kill anything, reptile, amphibian, rodent, insect, or other. Not out of altruism, but because I wouldn’t want to clean it up. Unless they’re the kind to cause damage, like rats or termites, I regard visitors the way I would regard a crack house on my street: hope they confine the action to their own turf, don’t interfere with them, and hope they move on soon.