Well said. I’ve been trying to do that, and I will try harder. I associate ugliness (in insects) with potential harm. It’s almost instinctual.
You apparently have never had an infestation of lady bugs. A few years back, my state released a shit-load of them to help bring the wild turkey population back up. The horrid things get into everything in early spring. They’re worse than flies in a barn at peak season. In infrequently inhabited buildings, they sometimes cover the floor so badly that every step you take goes crunch, crunch, crunch.
I once had the grave misfortune to eat one of them. I left my sandwich on a countertop when I went to answer the phone. When I got back to my sandwich, I took a big bite and literally spit it out, gagging. I opened the bread, and sure enough, a few ladybugs had crawled in there. It was the most horrid, musty taste I’ve ever experienced.
One ladybug may be cute, but a million of them is horrifying.
Now that is all kinds of wrong. I can sympathize with the bugs, but bats are mammals.
I kill yucky bugs, too, and any bug that is currently on me. Yuck! I will let spiders and the like live, though.
Last time I was employed to catch one, I put a hat on a stick and used it as a net to catch the bat. My co-workers gathered around me, in awe of my bravery and squealing in horror , throwing their arms up over their heads as if the bat’s only goal was to tangle itself in their hair.
After I knocked him down (secretly rolling my eyes at the histrionics) I wrapped him in a towel and took him outside and put him in a bush. Poor little thing was screaming its head off.
My boss came along an hour later and announced he’d just found a bat outside, which he’d stomped. “Oh no!” says I, and asked him why he’d done the foul deed. “Well, it was just laying on the ground. Since it didn’t get up and fly away when I walked over there, I thought it must be sick and I was afraid it would bite someone.”
“Sir, bats don’t have* knees*,” I said indignantly. “They can’t spring to their feet or fly up from the ground. They have to crawl to a vertical surface to take off and fly!”
“Oh,” he said. “Uh . . . sorry.”
Poor bat! He finds a nice, quiet place to take a nap and before you know it, this ugly, furless pink thing is knocking him down to the ground, smothering him in folds of fabric and then dumping him in shrubbery. Startled by these developments, he falls from the bush and before he can crawl up to the wall, he gets stepped on by another pink, furless thing.
Earwigs always deserve to die. You don’t want them crawling in your ear, eating their way through your brain, and crawling out the other ear, leaving a trail of eggs behind, do you?
For some reason I freed a moth today. Big thing, it was. It was stuck on the 6th floor stairwell, mindlessly and repeatedly smacking into the fluorescent lighting. It eventually tired (or knocked) itself out and came to rest on the floor. I scooped it up, took it downstairs and let it go outside, since that’s where I was headed anyway.
Moths get a bum rap. They’re not as pretty as butterflies and shed scaly powder when you touch them, not to mention their penchant for fabrics, but personally I’ve nothing against them.
While we were visiting my inlaws, a tiny little mole crept across the den floor. My father-in-law walked up to it and stomped it as we watched. My facial expression was pretty much :eek: . Afterwards, he kept saying to my husband, “It was just a mole.” Yes, exactly - it was just a cute little mole that got lost in your house, and your immediate response is to squash it?
My coworkers were very amused the other day when I came to the rescue of a spider that was about to be smashed.
I have a reputation now as a bug (ok, arachnid)hugger.
Flies, mosquitoes, bees/hornets, wasps - die. They have no right to annoy me or cause me pain.
Centipedes, cockroaches, ants - die. They have no right to try for my food.
Anything else, I’ll let live. I do respect creatures for the most part.
We’ve had periodic infestations of those little buggers, too. They nested in my SIL’s computer and *started it on fire! * :eek:
Um…nasty. Mole innards everywhere.
Creepy crawlies of all varieties belong outside. As long as they *stay * outside, I don’t bother them. When they come into my house, they forfeit their right to live.
Thankyouverymuch.
I don’t like spiders. When they are in my house, they die, mostly at the hand of Mr. Stuff, but on my orders. He and I were walking several miles from our house, and I saw a huge, interesting spider and was watching it. He couldn’t understand why I wasn’t ordering its death, and I had to explain that this particular spider was unlikely to come into my house and jump into my hair. Therefore, he could live.
Don’t be telling me that the spiders don’t want to jump into my hair. It happens, whether they intend it or not. And it is not allowed. Ever.
House centipedes are evil. They secretly crawl under your covers or into your open mouth while you’re sleeping. They’re plotting against you. When I see one in the house, you can bet the thing dies. Right after I get about fifteen feet of paper towel and role it into a big enough ball that there’s no risk of me actually coming into contact with them or feeling the sensation of their innards squish. Gah! I hate those evil little things.
:eek: :eek: :eek: :eek:
I already hated them. I have no words. I think I will spend the rest of my life with my mouth taped shut.
:does the icky dance:
“I have not yet come across a living ant that seemed to have any more sense than a dead one.”
–Mark Twain
My six-year old makes me carry spiders outside “so they can find their mommies.”
It’s scientific fact! And did you know that house centipedes, like all of subphylum Myriapoda, were actually created by Satan as a twisted mockery of the beauty of life? It’s true!
I detect a little sarcasm. :dubious:
That’s pretty rich coming from a guy (Nugent) who literally crapped his pants for a week to avoid having to go to Vietnam.
ACK! You poor thing, having to do that. Those glue traps are evil. My boss at my last job was going to use one, and the directions said that after the mouse is trapped, you just wrap the carboard base around it and THROW IT IN THE TRASH! I was like, do you realize the MOUSE IS STILL ALIVE when you do that?! ACK! I threw that trap away without using it…that is just WRONG!
I think you found a good solution, but yikes…that is tough. 