Ahem...
This is a very heartfelt and deep post. You are all warned.
Twice now, in the last month, I have felt the ramifications of another human disregarding my personal regard for insects.
You may think I am being flippant when I say this, but it strikes me deep.
The first instance is relating to a nest of wasps living outside of my home. I have all my life held a healthy respect for wasps, or what a Non-Outback Australian would call 'terror'. However, my dear grandmother, bless her beating heart, taught me to admire and protect native Australian insects, as the European occupation caused for most of them to be wiped out. She used to have a nest of bees inside a tree at her old house; tiny native black bees, which could do as much damage to you as a horsefly, if it truly struggled. I remember her showing them to me one day, through the haze of nostalgia and forgotten memories. She pointed to them, and said 'look here'. Or something like that. I remember the point. It gets a bit fuzzy from there, but I'm recalling this as best I can.
Regardless... "Look here", she said. "These bees have been here for a long time. And they'll be here for longer after we leave. But only if we protect them."
This struck me, deep within what would eventually grow to be my moral fiber. Unfortunately it only rang true for insects, so my fatherhood instincts are as destructive and non-existent as always, which makes me thankful that my biological clock hasn't started to ring. However, upon seeing these small black wasps outside my new apartment, I was struck with the immediate question. "Are these Native"?
It is obvious that if they were not native, I would have immediately destroyed them, and all they held dear. One does not fuck with paper wasps. However, after long hours of searching, google, asking family, and breaching the generation gap, I came to two realizations. 1. They were native. 2. They were aggressive as FUCK.
Everyone advised me to destroy them. However, I held back. I was always the one to park my car closest to the garden - Indeed, many times as I went past, I have brushed against or knocked the very frond which bore their nest. And so far they had not harmed me, or even been aggressive towards me.
That night, I struck a deal with my Roommate. The terms were simple. Given that the wasps were able to co-exist peacefully with us, we would not destroy them. However, if they were to sting either of us, it would be a reasonable amount of pain over a small period. If we were ever stung, we could completely exterminate their nest, which would hopefully be an experience cathartic enough to make up for the pain of the sting. Months passed, and our uneasy truce continued- Us by unspoken agreement, them by Nature vs the incalculable and ever-unknowing laws of the universe. Until the one time when my roommate's mother came to help us 'clean up the house'.
(She has the nickname 'Hurricane Alison', because she blows in and blows out, and nothing is where you remember it being, and the roof is 50 meters down the street)
In any case, she notices the wasps, and immediately causes a hubbub, not wanting anything dangerous around 'her boy'. I very calmly and succinctly explain to her about our agreement, and how the wasps have not been harmful yet. She asks if they're aggressive... I don't lie. "But", I defend furiously, "they can't be that aggressive if they've lived with us for this long without doing anything drastic". She remains unconvinced, and so I take a firm stance. "I made a deal- I gave my word. Regardless of whether or not they know, understand, or care, they have honored their side of the bargain, and so will I. And I will be quite upset if you destroy them".
Half an hour later, I went outside to find them missing. I confronted her, to have her reply that she 'moved them' into the side garden somewhere. Now, I was no fool. She would not have gone near that nest without being sure that every last one of them were dead. But, there were no dead little insect bodies on the ground, and I wasn't about to pull her over to the garden and force her to show me exactly where they were. Maybe I should have. But regardless, In effect, I was just being an overly compassionate, incredibly weird, teenager, arguing to a grown mother. There was nothing happening there.
The second instance happened just recently. I had a spider living inside the right-hand rear-view mirror of my car. Every morning when I got in the car to go to college, there would be a web over the mirror. I would clear away the mirror before leaving - have my day out, and the next morning, sure enough- there would be the web again. I thought about getting the Mortein, and just spraying away into the gap until I was sure that nothing could have survived the insecticide equivalent of a 1klb Neutron bomb - But. That was a persistent spider. Every day his crap got cleared away, and every day he build his web straight back up again. Who can know if the thought the benefits outweighed the cons, if he enjoyed the game, or if it was just a dumb spider who was attracted to the shiny mirror. I like to think it was the second option... Realistically, it was almost certainly the latter. In any case, I looked upon his persistence with a sort of condescending favor. For his persistence, I decided to reward him with life. High on my delusional god-hood power-trip, I went a step further, and gave him a name: Frank, and a gender. I never saw Frank - the only indication of his presence was that web every morning, but over time I stopped clearing it away as I went out. Over time, it grew, and began to join up with the door. People in shopping center parking lots would look sideways at it, wondering what was wrong with me - but how could I explain to them that I had developed an attachment to an unseen spider hiding inside my side-mirror?
As with the last story, disaster struck. While I was out eating dinner with family, my car was hit by an unknown. No details were left, and there was no indication of his presence, other than the fact that the right indicator was now sitting comfortably in it's new position: directly above the rear right wheel. My car was sent to a panel-beater's, and they did an amazing job of fixing the damage, and for a very reasonable price. They also "cleared out a spider that had gotten into the mirror on the right side". I was aghast - but, not wanting to be seen as completely insane, I thanked them, drove my car home, and silently mourned frank in the tiny spaces of thinking time between episodes of adventure time.
Thus is my stories. They aren't important - a month from now, they'll hardly occupy my mind. But right now, I'd like to say, that my roommate's mother is a total cow.
I hope all can empathize the depths of my pain.
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Topic: Things that made you sad today thread. (Read 9778312 times)