Epistemic status: I am vegan! Adjust your expectations for my empathy towards living beings accordingly.
A few months ago I moved into a new place which I am loving, aside from the fact that it is also loved by insects and arachnids from the surrounding area.
Nothing crazy, but most days I will find that a new spider has made an entry. A couple of times a month I’ll uncover a woodlouse crawling around. On three alarming occasions, a cricket has chosen my home as its platform to explore. One night, a bee crawled into my place, presumably exhibiting exhaustion. Beginning a couple of weeks ago, a trickling stream of ants started seeking slivers of sustenance in my kitchen.
I view it as a situation at least more manageable than living next to a stream of drowning children. I keep a unit of tupperware, and a sheet of card, to-hand in an easily accessible cupboard. When I encounter a new micro-guest, I endeavour to scoop them up and chuck them outside.
The guests
My thought to write this post came from considering the cases when I don’t exhibit mercy or I unintentionally cause some suffering to my guests. This has taken a few forms:
The ants
I don’t have a good way to counter the ants besides chemical warfare. Since only a few have entered my home I have generally left them alone — although in a couple of instances they met a quick demise: I sprayed and cleared their trail with bleach (catching a few ants in the process) and roughly picked up a couple that were in invasive locations and chucked their mangled body in the sink.
The bee
When the bee crawled into my place I instantly thought to give it some sugar water — but the only sugary thing I had was some popping candy sherbet. I created a quick solution combining the sherbet with water on a plate, and scooped the bee onto the edge of the plate. At first it writhed around wildly, but then stabilised itself and seemed to enjoy the treat. I left it outside and went to sleep.
The next morning, I found the bee stood some way away from the plate looking somewhat bolstered. Encouraged by its resilience, I looked around for a couple of pollinating flowers and lay those on the ground, next to the bee.[1]
Later in the day, however, I found the bee a few meters away from this spot — unfortunately having perished. I scooped the bee up and buried it under a couple of leaves, and laid the pollinating flowers from before on top.
The cricket
While scooping up one of the crickets, it jumped around madly and ended up with one of its antennae caught under the edge of the tupperware. Through my movement/its own movement, it then promptly dismembered most of this antenna. I haven’t researched whether crickets can effectively regrow these… I’m hoping they can.
The tiny spider
One time there was tiny spider running across my desk while I was in deep focus, and I reactively crushed it.
The not-so tiny spider
[***trigger warning***] Most alarmingly, one morning I awoke to a tickling sensation on my face. I instinctively hit at it, and as you can imagine also promptly repulsed at the sensation of feeling a small-medium sized spider being squashed in the process.
Reflecting on this took me to the conclusion that maybe I should have reached earlier: I need to dedicate serious attention to improve the sealing around my home.[2]
Relating this all of this to moral good
I think my stories illustrate an interesting concept:[3]
We should discount the moral badness of my prior actions — insofar as they reflected giving inadequate attention to the problems posed by the intruding beings.
However, now that I’ve acknowledged the scope of the problem and a potential solution,[4] any suffering caused by my inaction towards solving the problem holds more moral weight.
In loving memory of the ants, the bee, the cricket, and the spiders.
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