To Squish or Not to Squish

I was, admittedly, a bit of a weird kid growing up. While most of the other girls my age were interested in playing with their doll houses or playing house, I was outside in the backyard digging through the dirt. For some reason, I had an infatuation with pill bugs- or "rollie-pollies," as I referred to them. I think it was the way these harmless isopods would roll into little balls, or maybe it was how carelessly they would crawl around in my hands that interested me so. Regardless, pill bugs were one of the many "bugs" (a complicated term, believe it or not. Pill bugs aren't even really bugs at all- they're isopods, much like louses) I found myself interested in at a young age.

Common pill-bug, "Armadillidium vulgare"

I had all sorts of bug-related toys, too, of course. Critter cages, magnifying glasses, bug nets, tweezers, even a bug vacuum to suck up and collect the little insects. Honestly, I'm not entirely sure what sparked this interest in me, but it lasted up until middle school, when outdoor recess became extinct from my daily schedule.

Somewhere along the way, my love for the little critters started to deteriorate into something along the lines of disgust. I no longer enjoyed the thought of letting something crawl on my hands the way I did as a child. My previously pacifist nature of catch-and-releasing bugs that made their way into my house became squish-and-flush or squish-and-ditch. Either way, squishing the little guys was involved.

Maybe it was the stress of high school exams and standardized testing that changed me from benevolent to careless. Maybe there was no real reason for it at all. But, one day, on some random afternoon, something struck me: why was I killing these vagabond critters? They were the same as any other wild animal, weren't they? Just because they were tiny and alien to me, did they really deserve death just for being seen wandering across the kitchen tile? I decided no.

I'm not sure what changed my mindset or why, but ever since then, I've kept the squishing to a minimum. I may not be as fond of bugs as I once was, but the change to become more of a pacifist has rekindled an appreciation for these many-legged creatures. I probably wouldn't let a spider or a centipede crawl along my skin still, but I understand enough about some of these critters to carry them back into the great outdoors.

I know that the jumping spider on my windowsill is more afraid of me than I am of it. I try to put myself in the spider's eight little shoes (stay with me here) and think about how terrified I would be if some giant was walking towards me with a tissue in hand, poised to kill. After all, what could a tiny little bug like a jumping spider do to me? A little nip on the skin wouldn't even be enough to draw blood. Even if I did sustain a bite, wouldn't it have been in self defense?

We can't read insect body language like we can a dog's wagging tail or a cat's purr. Insects are, at their core, simply out to survive. As some of the smallest residents of our great natural world (excluding bacterium, of course), they have a lot of predators to worry about. I've made the change to lessen their threats by one.