happydalek (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
happydalek) wrote2009-03-18 09:43 pm
happydalek) wrote2009-03-18 09:43 pm
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I let one of them go.
I found another one of those ugly, brown, shield-shaped stink bugs in my room. Normally I only find them when they go whizzing by my ear in quiet moments, scaring the living daylights out of me (they're BIG and they make a horrendously loud and low-pitched buzzing sound when they zip by *shudder*). When that happens, I have absolutely no qualms about hunting the little sucker down, wrapping the toe of a sturdy shoe in a tissue, then using it to crush the little bugger into a chitin-and-innards stew. (You have to be careful, because squishing them is what makes them stink, hence the tissue for biohazard control.) But that didn't happen today.
I was watering my pet cactus Herbert, and I just happened to notice the insect resting on the underside of one of the blades. It was just sitting there, its long legs wrapped around the sides of the blade for support, not doing anything. It looked so natural there--a bug on a plant, as nature intended--that I was content to leave it alone. It wasn't chewing on Herbert or making any aggressive action at all, so I left it there and went about my business. A few hours later, it was still there, still behaving like a perfect houseguest. But I knew I couldn't leave there, because if I did, I'm sure that it would have taken to flying around the room in the middle of the night, scaring me out of a sound sleep by plopping onto my hair (or my face!) or doing a low-altitude flyby that would have me thinking a man-sized wasp was invading my room.
So I made my decision. Opening my window a crack, I fetched a tissue and used it to carefully disengage the insect (which was about the size of my thumbnail) from the underside of Herbert's leafblade. Then I whisked over the window and tossed it outside. No real reason for it, aside from the fact that I just didn't feel like squashing it. I went out of my way to spare its life. As the Doctor put it:
"Because she smiled, because he's got freckles. Because they begged. And that's how you live with yourself. That's how you slaugher millions. Because once in a while, on a whim, if the wind's in the right direction...you happen to be kind."
And now I really want to watch Boomtown.
I was watering my pet cactus Herbert, and I just happened to notice the insect resting on the underside of one of the blades. It was just sitting there, its long legs wrapped around the sides of the blade for support, not doing anything. It looked so natural there--a bug on a plant, as nature intended--that I was content to leave it alone. It wasn't chewing on Herbert or making any aggressive action at all, so I left it there and went about my business. A few hours later, it was still there, still behaving like a perfect houseguest. But I knew I couldn't leave there, because if I did, I'm sure that it would have taken to flying around the room in the middle of the night, scaring me out of a sound sleep by plopping onto my hair (or my face!) or doing a low-altitude flyby that would have me thinking a man-sized wasp was invading my room.
So I made my decision. Opening my window a crack, I fetched a tissue and used it to carefully disengage the insect (which was about the size of my thumbnail) from the underside of Herbert's leafblade. Then I whisked over the window and tossed it outside. No real reason for it, aside from the fact that I just didn't feel like squashing it. I went out of my way to spare its life. As the Doctor put it:
"Because she smiled, because he's got freckles. Because they begged. And that's how you live with yourself. That's how you slaugher millions. Because once in a while, on a whim, if the wind's in the right direction...you happen to be kind."
And now I really want to watch Boomtown.
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