On Squishing Bugs

Further evidence why I am either a terrible enlightened being or a terrible candidate for doing drugs:


There is a spider on my ceiling and I don't know what to do about it.

(S)He is going to die. As soon as I finish writing this post, in fact. The arachnid has merely as long left as I have verbiage within my heart. Not a great while, but an unknown, much as all life seems to be, though I certainly have a better idea of it than (s)he does.


I feel bad, killing spiders. They're chill. They relax. They eat the bugs I dislike having in my house. Overall, I would prefer this spider to live, and serve our mutual good. However it is directly over my head were I to go to bed without smooshing it, and so it must die.

I tell myself it will not matter, that the spider is not truly alive, only a biological robot acting out its base functionality in a predetermined manner. Put any other spider in the same situation and the same decisions would be made. A meat-bot.

And yet, while that may be true of, say, fruit flies, I've seen spiders stick out a leg inquisitively, then retract it, thinking. Sure, it may be running an Enigma-level punch card system in an Apple A6 world, but that little guy works on the same principles I do. I've looked it up, (s)he has a brain. And a heart, and some truly horrific looking internal bits, but that spider can feel and make decisions.

Truly horrific.

Is it better that I tell myself it would be quick? The complete annihilation of a small, crunchy life so instantaneous that life itself would cease before it realized such? I have heard that when you are shot, you feel the bullet burning through your insides the entire way. You feel the life siphoned out of you. Is this what I condemn another creature to? A reduction of its form to a small puddle of guts and goo and twitching legs in the crumpled ball of some tissue?

I tell myself that I am not snuffing out a life, that evolution will continue on and one day perhaps create a spider smart enough to have its rights protected like a dog or a dolphin or specially educated gorilla or chimp.

Perhaps it will even be smart enough to stay the hell away from Kleenex-toting humans.

An Unnecessary Number of Butterfly Jokes

 











A monarch butterfly migrates past two moths from Texas. One moth turns to the other and says, "Fucking Mexicans."

Mark Wahlberg rushes up to a lepidopterist through a field of butterflies, scattering the insects as he screams, "Doctor! Doctor! You've got to help me!" The lepidopterist looks at him with concern, asking, "What? What's wrong?" Mark Wahlberg says, "Doctor! I'm seeing spots!" And the lepidopterist says, "You're a fucking asshole, Mark."

You ever think Godzilla vs. Mothra never would have happened if Godzilla wasn't always vomiting like a giant porch light?


A caterpillar turns to a couple inchworms and says, "I'm all about change." When she crawls away one inchworm says to the other, "Man, Leslie's really been different since she discovered weed at college."


I want to genetically engineer a butterfly with a spot on the back of its abdomen that looks like a tiny person. Then on that tiny person's back is a tattoo of a goddam butterfly.


A caterpillar was having a screaming match with its parents. "Maybe I don't want to be like you, alright? Maybe I don't want to be a butterfly!" So he dropped out and became an artist.

On Bees

This afternoon a bumble bee sort of floated up to my second story window all gentle like, fat and slow and happy like an Air Hogs^TM brand personal aircraft toy.

I fucking hate wasps, and yellow jackets, and even those regular skinny bees that are just essentially tiny wasps or yellow jackets. Any way I try not to freak out, but I always keep to bobbing and weaving and keeping the damned things from landing on my at all. I've only been stung once and I'm not allergic, it just sucks to get stung by a bee.

But bumble bees?

Shit, they're my buds. We get along like flowers and, well, bees.

They're just so damned cute. All round and fuzzy. Where do they get off, really? I see a bumble bee floating around me, my first instinct isn't, "OH FUCK OH FUCK OH GEEZE GET IT OFF GET IT OFF GET IT OFF AAAAAHHHHHHGH!!!!"

It's more like, "Aw maaaa, yeeeaaaaahh…. Hells yeah, little guy! Or girl. You're all girls, right? That's cool. I'm down with equal opportunity insecting. Whatchu up to today, girl? You got some pollen off a dandy-lion or somethin'? That's pretty sweet, yo."

People freak out around bees and go spastic and put all those fear pheromones into the air and that just scares the bee. It lands on you and goes nuts and stings you and then it dies and you're in pain.

But a bumble bee lands on me it doesn't sense fear. All it says is, "Oh! Hey. That's a thing. Alright. Peace out, weird big thing," and flies off.

Hells yeah. I'm a thing.