Bugs, Rabbits and Dogs

“Oh, it’s a bug.”

There was something on my arm as I was typing, a sort of tickling sensation.

What do you do? Smash it flat with the other hand? Blow it off gently? It seemed to be harmless so I was loath to just kill it.

Killing is too easy. It is something that we do as a reflex action, without thought.

Extinguishing a life, however small, is still killing. Because the bug is tiny doesn’t make it less worthy of living than you or I.

Do we have the right to continue in our existence over a small insect because we are bigger, more intelligent?

At what point do we say that a creature is worthy of life. Life with us, that is. What is it that makes us say that killing a rat is acceptable but slaughtering a cat is a bad thing?

They are both animals; they both have hearts and lungs; they both have some sort of brain function and they are both covered in hair or fur.

Rabbits, then? Can rabbits live amongst us? As pets only, of course. All other rabbits are vermin and must be immediately squashed under the wheels of a tractor. Especially in Australia where rabbits are eating the heart out of the land.

Oh, but rabbits are soft and cuddly, they feel good. They also taste good.

Snakes. Perhaps we can kill snakes. Snakes are nasty, horrible, slimy things.

Except they are not. Slimy. At all. They are not really nasty, either. Snakes do their own thing and care not much for anybody else.

Dogs. It must be fine to kill dogs. Dogs have to be vermin. They hunt in packs, they smell bad, they are noisy and their faeces spread unspeakable diseases. Many breeds of dogs are unutterably dangerous. There are often news reports that tell us of people—children usually, that are attacked by dogs. Savagely attacked.

Pit bulls, Rotweilers and German Shepherds seem to top the list. A Jack Russell bit me once. Perhaps I should add Jack Russells to the list of savage beasts.

So we can kill dogs, then.

Except we cannot because they, like cats and some (selected) rabbits are regarded as pets. We also classify, at will, certain other small rodents as pets. Rodents like gerbils, hamsters, white mice and rats.

Is a hamster a rodent? Probably not. Please resist the temptation to tell me.

People tell us that dogs are not dangerous—it is the owners who are dangerous. It is the human at the end of the leash that should pick up the dog’s droppings, that dogs, like every other animals, has to ‘go’ when it needs to do so.

So it is small things that we can kill at our pleasure.

Humming birds are small.

No?

Pigeons are pests and vermin. Airborne rats—full of diseases, they are. They should be converted into a pie, or pies, as soon as possible. Rooks, too. Rooks can make a tasty pie.

Problem with downing a pigeon is that the police tend to frown upon persons wielding a shotgun in the city centre...

You could always down a duck. That was a joke or, at least, the semblance of one.

Slugs, snails, mosquitoes, wasps, caterpillars (but not, oddly, butterflies) are all fair game for the pestilential killing fields. Yet they all live. They all deserve to live.

We have no greater right to life than they do.

But it tickled. So I crushed it.