I’m not anti-hunting, but what is up with some people’s seemingly
natural proclivity to kill non-human creatures that are smaller than them even
if they’re not doing anything to you and you’re not going to eat them – you’re
just going to stomp them onto the ground and leave them. I’m mostly thinking of insects and why it
seems fun to a lot of kids to kill insects.
When I was walking my dog this morning, I saw a worm
crawling on the sidewalk and it almost automatically popped into my head that
some kids would probably automatically step on it, not because they were scared
of it, but because it was a small creature that they had the power to crush.
And then I started
thinking what is up with that – the apparently natural inclination to kill
small things – to stomp or squish insects to death, even if the insects are
outside. I recently saw one of my
nephews, almost as soon as he saw a spider outside, repeatedly stomp on the
thing, as though the death of the spider was both fun and necessary.
Some adults seem to have a tendency to automatically have to
kill an insect as soon as they see it in their house ( I feel that way about
mosquitoes), so maybe that translates to their kids as automatically having to
kill it if they see an insect ANYWHERE, even outside. And maybe that combines
with a natural tendency to crush things that we have the power to crush – and kids
are too young to analyze where that tendency comes from and what it means and
make their own choice of turning it up, toning it down, or otherwise
controlling it – or at least questioning where it comes from and what it means.
As an adult, it’s not like I’ve never killed a spider before
– I’ve killed a few big ones in my house – but then I feel guilty that I didn’t
just manage to take the living creature outside and allow it to do its own
thing. Small spiders in my house don’t
even bother me; if I see one I just leave it be. If I saw one that I knew was poisonous then I’d
probably kill it, so it didn’t kill me – but I wouldn’t kill one for no
apparent reason other than controlling and causing death.
I have a memory from my childhood, in which me and one of my
sisters and my mom were visiting my aunt who lived in Florida and were spending
time in an area where we were fishing and there were little crabs walking
around on the ground. I was an un-athletic
girl and didn’t have very good aim, so when I saw this one little crab a ways
away from me, just staying in the same place, I thought I’d throw a rock in its
general direction, so that the rock landing near it would make it start moving
again. Well, the rock I threw ended up landing directly on top of the crab and
crushed it into oblivion. I certainly didn’t feel like that was a powerful, successful
accomplishment. I felt awful, upset and guilty, but kept those feelings to
myself and didn’t tell anyone that I had accidentally managed to kill a crab. I certainly didn't brag about it.
Maybe I’m a contradictory mess though (and maybe I’ve always
been that way) because even though my memory of guilt about accidentally killing
a crab is true, I also remember torturing a few insects as a kid. Not frequently and not thinking of it as
purposeful torture at the time, but why did my sister and I once catch a fly in
our house and tear off one of its wings and then the other and then just watch
it, unable to fly, and then pick it up while it was still alive and flush it
down the toilet? And why did I once
catch a daddy long legs spider and slowly tear off all of its long legs until
it was nothing but a little round circle that couldn’t move?
***
My grandpa died early this morning and for some reason (maybe
deriving from past memories combined with a poem I read last night called “After
the Stillbirth, the Pioneer Wife Dresses a Rabbit” by Donna Vorreyer), I’m remembering a time way
back when I was in junior high and had a pet rabbit and my grandpa seemed to
think it was really humorous to tell me about the days when he was a boy and
would snap rabbits necks.
In later years, I saw her perform at one of the Lilith Fair concerts, attended with my sisters, and she was wonderful. 
