High school insect-slayer makes her confession
I often find myself in the unusual position of defending bugs, encouraging people to let spiders alone and to let insects in the garden sort things out among themselves.
As the pets and wildlife columnist for the Bay Area News Group, I tell folks that bees aren’t lurking on street corners waiting to sting unsuspecting passersby; that spiders don’t stalk us and bite us in our sleep; and that most insects we encounter are doing more for us than we are for them.
What’s so unusual about my being a defender of insects is that at one point in my life, I deeply feared the creepy, crawly little devils and wouldn’t be caught anywhere near one if I could help it.
It wasn’t a phobia I developed on a whim. I had help, in the form of my 10th grade biology teacher.
With the help of my lab partner, I struggled through the dissection part of the class, but the real test came when our teacher set us the task of amassing an insect collection. To get an A, you needed to collect 50; for a B, it was 40.
I got the first 30 done fairly quickly, but I hated every second of it. I didn’t mind catching them, as it only involved a few swipes with a net. But putting them into the killing jar was another matter.
Even typing the words “killing jar” make my palms sweat and gives me flashbacks. I no longer remember what we used inside that jar to kill the bugs, but the memory of the odor is permanently seared in my nostrils.
I apologized to each and every bug I dropped into that jar, and I promised them that their deaths would not be in vain. They were, after all, helping to keep my grade point average high.
As the weeks wore on, it got more and more difficult to find bugs I didn’t already have, and I felt more and more distraught about the slaughter. The real horror, however, was about to come.
I had reached the point where I had collected enough to earn a B, but wanting to press on for the A, I nabbed a grasshopper in my little net. It was by far the largest bug I had caught. I dropped it into the
killing jar with the usual apology and set the jar aside.
The next morning when I checked, the grasshopper was still alive. It didn’t look well, and had stained the tissue inside with black fluid. I cried as I poured a little bit more of the murderous liquid in the jar and shoved it away. Every time I checked, the grasshopper was struggling on. I began imagining I could hear tiny, desperate screams coming from behind the glass.
On the fourth day of the ordeal, I totally lost it. I begged the grasshopper to please, just please die. I swore never to kill another bug, if only it would just die. That night I had horrible dreams. The spouses and children of the 40 dead insects visited me. They poured into my room, covering the floor and climbing slowly up the bed frame, revenge on their minds. On their backs, they carried a human-sized killing jar with my name on it.
The next day, the grasshopper had finally gone on to bug heaven, and with shaking hands I pinned its body to my collection and turned it into my teacher, who appeared surprised I had settled on the B.
After that, I took the opposite path whenever I saw a bug, convinced some of them were still holding grudges. I couldn’t even bring myself to chase the fireflies in my grandparents’ front yard.
It wasn’t until a few years ago, when taking master gardener training, that I got a much better perspective on insects. Looking at them through a magnifying glass, I realized how beautiful they really are, and how little concerned they are at getting even with me.
I finally learned the lesson that my biology teacher likely had been trying to teach, and that was about the variety of insects and their important role in our lives.
I still deeply regret that grasshopper’s murder and as atonement, I try to save the lives of future generations of crawly things. And I hope they never manage to get a Mason’s jar big enough to squeeze me into.
Every time I checked, the grasshopper was struggling on. I began imagining I could hear tiny, desperate screams coming from behind the glass.