Kindness to Bugs

The other day when I thought that guy was spying on me, muttering "I know where you go, and I know what you do there" in a real menacing way on the phone, I was beside myself. I was incoherent. I twitched, babbled, raved. I was literally secreting some kind of fear sweat from my pores that could only be described as black corruption. It was biblical, like Gethsemane.

But -- and there's no need to rehearse all the details -- I overcame certain aspects of my fear, and managed by the power of positive thinking to thwart the guy from calling again.

Since then, and since eating all those white things, I've felt a serenity that is otherworldly. I'm so at peace with things that I really could freelance for Guideposts. "Fairy tales could come true, it could happen to you, if you're young at heart," I might say, which doesn't really fit the context of this situation but it's still a great song.

In this state of renewal, bliss, I've decided to be kind to the creation. That means not killing where I don't have to, although if I forget I'll have to excuse myself.

A couple weeks ago we had literally millions of bugs in the lawn and I had to go over the grass with the mower. I was thinking, to the bugs I'm like a terrorist. Were they to have a news network and newspapers down in their little world, the headlines would've been six inches tall, "THOUSANDS WIPED OUT BY TERRORIST!" But it would appear that bugs don't have history, just their place in "natural history."

Still, that doesn't mean we can't be fairly kind to them, like the Ahimsa. They go around with masks so they don't accidentally breathe in a bug and thereby kill it.

In my kindness campaign toward bugs, I've picked up a few already, gently, with Kleenex, and have taken them outside for release. It's a lot cleaner than just squashing them, too. I saw a centipede or millipede, sort of like the one pictured, and I had to put something away in the other room before tending to it. Then I came back and it was gone, but I knew it couldn't have gone far. So there I am, tiptoeing around so I wouldn't step on it, but it was frustrating. It couldn't have disappeared! After a while I discovered what happened. It was up against the floorboard, in the dark, and now made a run for it. I was right on it with a Kleenex, and it escaped, then I caught it again, and got it outside for release.

But a while ago I accidentally forgot myself. Sitting at the computer I felt something small on my neck and reached back and picked it off and rubbed it between my fingers. I never saw it but it was probably an ant or something about that size.