Since I had finished stacking a load of firewood under the house, my father suggested I could get rid of some of the stink beetles infesting a lime tree in the yard. The usual method of doing so, he told me, was either to quickly throw them on the ground and stomp 'em, or throw them in a bucket of soapy water.
I wasn't particularly enthralled by the idea in the first place. Not because I was afraid of getting sprayed with stink juice (which smelled somewhat like cinnamon, from the whiff I caught of it when he demonstrated the grab 'n' stomp), but because I'm kind of a wuss and didn't want to kill them, even if they were making a mess of the tree.
Eventually though, I figured I'd stomp on just one. I wouldn't be dealing any terrible blows to their population, at least, not that I should have any reason to care about that anyway. But as I looked for a suitable victim, all the beetles seemed to be in pairs, mating. My emotional state probably couldn't handle two committing two brutal murders in one go, so I looked further, and shortly discovered a lone bug behind a branch, not far from one of the pairs getting it on.
Was it some sort of creepy voyeur, perving on them from afar? Was is a jealous ex? Perhaps it had just come to confess its true, long-hidden feelings to the love of its life, only to find him/her in the throes of wild passion with another beetle, possibly its best friend?
Whatever the case, I grabbed the heartbroken bug (trying to tell myself it was the beetle version of the 'Forver Alone' meme and that I was actually sparing it a lifetime of lonely suffering), threw it on the ground and stomped it. Immediately, I regretted it. Its crushed and mangled form, pressed into the grass at my feet, just looked so wrong. It probably spent its last moments wondering just what it had done to deserve such punishment, on top of all the heartache it felt already.
Perhaps it welcomed the giant, fleshy pink hand of death, seeing it as a final escape from its miserable existence (it didn't even seem to try and spray me with its butt-goop, after all). More likely, it seemed to me, that the poor thing had had just enough time- as it was plucked from its home and thrown several bug-storeys to the ground- to reflect on its life, remembering every missed opportunity and lost love, and then- as the sole of my shoe descended on it like a solar eclipse, plunging it into darkness matching that of its heart- to feel a deep, profound regret at losing any chance of ever making amends for its past failures.
I don't know. I know I shouldn't care so much about a beetle, I'm aware that they don't really have brains, and probably not much in the way of pain receptors, either. But who am I to decide which bug gets to live and which must suffer an undignified death beneath a budget-range Rivers sneaker? For all I know, in my human arrogance, that creature might have been destined for great things. Perhaps it was the next lord of beetles, ready to lead its people to world conquest. Or perhaps it had spent its life in training to be the first beetle-human ambassador, silently rehearsing a grand speech that would bring peace between two very different species, that have been squishing/spraying smelly crap at each other for centuries. Perhaps that beetle would have gone on to become the star of an epic film fit to rival A Bug's Life, had I not snuffed out its life before its potential could be realised.
...Come to think of it, it's probably kid's films like A Bug's Life that are to blame for making me feel this way. Goddamn sentimental child-self.
Anyway, I've rambled enough. Time to post this and start drinking heavily to erase the awful image of that cracked, twisted carapace, the sound of its feeble cries for mercy, and the knowledge that I put out the brightest spark of the insect world from my mind.
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Topic: Things that made you mildly upset today thread (Read 1223210 times)