It's been a long, hot, humid, steamy July. Perfect bug-incubating weather.
I like to pick garden pests (japanese beetles, colorado potato bugs, stinkbugs, etc) from the tender leaves of my vegetables and flowers and trick them into glass jars.
Then I observe them for a day or two.
Then I kill them.
Slowly.
I watch them so that I can observe their behaviors so that I know how to kill them more effectively in the future.
I kill them with different substances (organic, like water, wine, or beer) and watch their reactions to learn more about effective elimination methods.
OK, sometimes I use leftover kerosene. It works. And I don't use much. And it's leftover, saturated with rainwater so it's unfit for any other use, really.
Honestly. Don't hold this against my sustainable living passion.
Gas is very effective.
Does this make me any different in my applied behavior from Hilter, or Cheney, or Bush Sr & Jr?
Or [insert name of infamous person here who strategically eliminated humans and applied scientific knowledge to increase the effectiveness and productivity of the elimination methods]?
I am using gentle language here on purpose.
The German behavior study programs prior to and during WW2 - in which 'selected' people were used in underwater experiments - resulted in the scientific foundation that makes modern scuba and human underwater life-sustaining gear possible.
How evil is that?
I often ponder - what does God think about scuba diving and how it became so?
Makes you think twice before strapping on that oxygen tank and zipping up that wetsuit, huh?
ScubagearUSA - Technology made possible by dead people.
I am, after all, only killing bugs. My hubby - God bless his gentle yet manly soul - can count the amount of insects he has killed on one hand - most of them at my bequest.
I do derive a certain pleasure from watching those Japanese beetles swim around and then slowly spin to a stop and drop to the bottom of the jar, joining hundreds that danced the same dance before.
I get even more excited when I capture a mating pair:
Score!, I think, Just broke that cycle for next year!
They are, after all, I reassure myself, only bugs. And they eat the heck out of our vegetable leaves, grapes, hibiscus, roses, and sunflowers.
No, I'm not like Hitler. Or any of the others.
Not at all.
