We Love to Kill Things

We love to kill things.

We put herbicides and pesticides on our lawns. Yeah, kill those weeds! Kill those nasty grubs! (There is a TV commercial for a weed-killer chemical that shows a man with his spray wand, photographed from a low angle—making the man look like a warrior or a superhero.) Never mind that we might be killing beneficial insects, worms, butterflies, and even birds.

Then there is "recreational hunting." The very term is shocking to me. One hundred years ago (and probably still today to a lesser degree) the "Great White Hunter" would go on safaris in Africa to shoot lions, tigers, elephants—with the result that today there are very few tigers left in the world and elephants are much reduced in population. And this is true of many other animals. (It must be admitted that habitat destruction, usually as a result of growing human populations, is also a big factor in the decline of a lot of species of wildlife.) Many animals were hunted to extinction. Bison, which had roamed the Plains in huge herds and numbered in the millions, were reduced to only a few individual animals. The passenger pigeon also numbered enormous flocks—and now they are totally extinct.

Scientists--both self-styled and apparently real scientists--were not immune to the lure of killing. They would kill birds to study them. They used a gun called a "fowling piece." That's how all the dead birds in museum collections came to be there.

There were some online comments about people who will deliberately run over turtles in the road. And this happens also with squirrels, opossums, and lots of other animals, of course. A lot of "roadkill" does not result from unavoidable accidents but, sadly, many a driver is apparently playing Great White Hunter while driving his car.

Some people just don't like wildlife. I have a friend like that. He destroyed a bird's nest on my property before I could stop him, and not long ago when we saw a garter snake, he moved toward it with some hostile intent before I did, this time, stop him.

So there is this attitude that hates or fears Nature and the Wild. In the Nineteenth Century and through the middle of the Twentieth and still today there has been this idea of Man triumphing over Nature, of "taming" it. So we build dams, dig canals, bulldoze mountains--do a lot to rearrange the landscape.

Fortunately there is a growing recognition that the welfare of Man—Homo sapiens—is very closely tied up with that of the rest of the natural creation. Thus we have the environmental and conservation movements.

Some individuals show even a Hindu-like respect for life. When my boyfriend is here, if there's an insect in the house, he tries to capture it (and succeeds!) and then releases it outside.

This philosophy can be taken to what many people would consider extremes. I once knew a guy who would not kill cockroaches in his apartment. The result was that the wall in his kitchen was pretty literally wallpapered with cockroaches. On the one hand I admire his reverence for life, but many people would say that there are sanitation considerations involved here. I have no problem with capturing bugs to release them outside, as my friend does; although, I'll admit, when he's not here I'll swat that fly or squash that bug.

Update July 15, 2013.
Given the time of year that it is, I inevitably have had some flies in my house. I got out the ol' fly swatter and dispatched a couple of them. Then I was watching one and started to feel sorry for it and see its intelligence. They'll crawl along a window, thinking--reasonably enough--that the daylight or what looks like the outdoors that they can see on the other side of the glass is the key to finding their way outside. Well, I tried A.'s method of catching them and, after one or two tries, I did catch it and released it outside. It felt good to have preserved its life. I hope Someone is alloting me some good karma for that.

Update July 18, 2013
I am somewhat surprised at myself for my failure to mention Homo sapiens' propensity for killing members of his own species. Not only is modern man arguably quite warlike, but modern archeological research has been producing evidence that Man has always been warlike. The very word war evidently is not abhorrent to the great majority of Americans; if it were, our government would not so blithely deliver to us a War on Poverty, War on Drugs, etc. Of course these "wars" (at least in principle) do not kill anyone, but I simply ask you to think about the choice of words.

Copyright © 2013