This is of course pretty much our fault. To begin with we're a couple of slobs -- I can be very neat and tidy when I get around to it, but I get around to it on a pretty slow cycle, usually kicked off when there are literally no dishes left outside of the sink pile. There's more to it than that, though, I think.
When I was in kindergarten, I was sitting on a step near the school building during recess, watching a spider at work on its web. Some other kid came up, saw what I was doing, and squashed the spider. I don't remember the kid's face and I don't think I even knew his name then, but I remember the way the spider's glossy round abdomen was cracked open, how the stuff inside it was yellow and red and smeared out like a singularly horrendous booger, how its graceful little legs were all splayed and bent.
A teacher found me crying, and I felt even worse that it took so long to make her understand that I wasn't crying because a spider scared me, but because it died. In retrospect I think the reason I was so upset was that I felt it was my fault. If I hadn't drawn attention to the spider just by being curious about it, it could have gone on with its spider business unharmed. I don't think I realized that at the time; what I do remember is having a vivid image of the spider, large and translucent, drifting away into the sky. I don't know what kind of concept of mortality I might have had at that age, but I guess I had a pretty clear idea what a ghost was.
Around the same time -- it must have been within about the same year, because I was at the same school -- there was a field trip to a local zoo. I don't remember much about the place except that they had a vending machine that made little wax animals right in front of your eyes, which I found even more intriguing than most of the animals -- I do recall that it was a pretty dingy and urban little zoo.
What I do remember very clearly is that at one point I was trailing a bit behind the rest of the group, but I wasn't the last in the rear. That was another little boy, who made a strange noise behind me; I turned around, and in his hand was a horrible mess: a mass of yellow and clear ooze, with a twitching mass of red slime in its center, slime with eyes and tiny clawed feet.
Somewhere he had found a bird's egg, and broken it. I vaguely recall that a teacher spotted us before either of us could say anything; I barely had time to register the dull stunned look on his face before the adults descended. I imagine that whoever that kid was, he probably remembers more clearly than I do how the teachers reacted. I just remember the dying half-made bird.
Somewhere within two or three years of the same period -- I really don't remember the order on this; it may have been before I even started school, but I'm just not sure -- we had a little black dog named Holly, who got old. Her eyes got cloudy and weak, and her legs stiffened with arthritis. In the end she had to be put to sleep.
I don't remember very much detail beyond that. What I do remember is that the decision to put her down came immediately after she had snapped at, or possibly bit, either myself or my sister (I must have been at least four, then, if my sister was around and already walking). At the time I just wasn't aware of all the signs that the dog was old and sick. The impression I got, and which remained with me for many years, was that the dog had been taken away because she'd done one bad thing.
Many years later, when I was around 21 or 22, my girlfriend had a pet rat who was very bright and loyal. We'd let the rat out while we lounged around, and she liked to just sit and clean her self on my girlfriend's shoulder, or pin me down by falling asleep with her head stuck perilously through one of my belt loops. We dyed her green and told people she was a rare African green rat, and when she was in an active mood, she would eagerly come back to your hand to be flung three feet onto the mattress over and over again.
Of course the rat, too, got old. She developed a lung infection and began to cough all night, and more often than not her muzzle was rimmed with blood. One night she lost all her strength and could barely move, whimpering with every strained and hitching breath. We called the vet, who had helped the rat already live as long as she had, but he regretted having only one piece of advice to offer that night.
So I took a damp cloth, and we both stroked the rat's heaving sides while I smothered her.
About a year and a half ago, I found a dead bat on the sidewalk in front of a sorority house on my way to work. I was distracted and troubled throughout the day, and when my shift ended, I took with me a small empty box, and a bundle of paper towels.
The bat was still there, and in the winter cold, no insects had gotten to it yet. Its body was about two inches long with a soft ginger pelt. Its wings were neatly folded in close; on first spotting it I thought it might have been a hamster or a mouse. Its eyes were closed.
I took a thick layer of paper towels -- however sentimental I might wax, I'm not going to actually touch a dead bat -- and bundled the cold little body into the box. I fastened it shut with a silver elastic band, wrote a short inscription on the box, and buried it behind my apartment building.
I couldn't stand the idea of just leaving the soft, peaceful little corpse where it was, to become an object of squealing disgust when the girls from the sorority came out; and I couldn't stand either to treat it like a piece of trash, swept into the gutter with the fallen leaves and cigarette butts. I buried it more in respect for its vacated body than for any notion of a flying rodent's soul.
So we have a roach problem in our apartment, and I'm not doing anything about it because I just don't like killing animals, even insects. The roaches are just living; they aren't doing me any harm, and despite widespread impressions, cockroaches have never been implicated as carriers of disease -- they are in fact very fastidious in cleaning their limbs and typically home to fewer germs than a human finger. And they just don't freak me out, personally, in small numbers; I don't find a roach any more hideous than a grasshopper or a pillbug or a honeybee, and less bothersome than a wasp or an unexpected spider.
If it weren't for other people, I wouldn't have much trouble with the roaches at all. But we'll have to do something about them if we're ever going to have guests over, especially guests of the very friendly persuasion, and I doubt the apartment managers or our immediate neighbors would be terribly happy to find out about all our extra lodgers.
But of course, the roaches repay our tolerance by thriving, and I know that if we don't let the apartment's insect guy spray them out, they'll keep on breeding past my limit -- I don't mind seeing one or two wandering around, but dozens of them lose my sympathies pretty quickly. But I still dither and wait, in melancholy Danish fashion, never quite getting around to the relatively simple action of sealing all the food and calling in the bug bombers.
It's not a high-flown moral principle or a philosophical position, it's just a gut reaction. I don't like killing things just because they're alive in my presence.
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