I try to instill respect for all life in Summer. This respect includes bugs too. I will admit that I do not always practice what I preach. When I lived in Roach Heaven, Alabama I had absolutely no qualms about smashing a roach...or at least having my son or Toby do the dirty deed for me.
Summer takes all animal life pretty seriously. We don't even kill the scorpions that tend to want to crawl under the sheets with us at night.
The other night I noticed a very tiny spider in the corner of the bathroom. I nonchalantly took a piece of toilet paper and wiped the spider with web out of the corner and threw it into the toilet. Summer let out a wail. You would have thought that I had killed her pet the way she was reacting. She cried for an hour. She had obviously built some sort of relationship with this "corner spider".
All I could think was what kind of monster I must have created and how her dad gets to miss out on these drama shows.
It did get me to thinking....why did I feel o.k about ending the tiny spiders life??? Why does it not bother me to destroy an ant bed?? They are just as much a living thing as a cricket, scorpion, snake, rabbit, and on up to the largest animal you can think of.
Why is it always so easy to smash the little guy?? What makes the little guys life less of a life than the big guy?? Every living thing no matter how disgusting or aggravating they are play an important part in life.
In all species it has always been o.k to smash the little guy just because he is little. Does being little make something or someone appear unimportant???
Just a little food for thought......
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Great post. I follow and like your thinking. We transfer spiders outside whenever possible. Summer sounds like a very special little girl.
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