At Least Miss Muffet Was A Pacivist. Although I’m Not Sure She Recycled

Posted on April 29, 2009
Filed Under Daily, Friends | 7 Comments

I’m one of those people who can’t kill a bug — and it’s not because I’m scared.
I’m just that person who’s all, “Aww, take it outside and set him free.”
And then people are like, “That is a Brown Recluse Spider!!!”
And I’m like, “Who cares?!?! It’s not his fault he’s poisonous! How would you like it if someone SMASHED YOUR FACE IN?”

I’m the person who traps spiders in a cup to take them outside, and I talk to ants like, “I know you can hear me, and I know you talk to your friends, so seriously, all of you need to leave the peanut butter alone.”

Aside from the fact that I feel really bad when bugs die, I also think it’s weird to just kill them — like, you just pounded a living thing into a pulp.
When you hit a bug with a shoe, or grab 43 paper towels and make a fist to pound its guts out, (which is totally why our planet is in peril, btw — because of your paper towel abuse) you’ve actually just broken his little legs, punctured his lungs and dislocated his nose and jaw — the whole thing just seems so unnecessarily violent.

I don’t know if this next paragraph is going to make me look like a hypocrite, but when I see a bumble bee inside my house, I open the door/window and am all, “Fly away, Sweet Bee. Fly away.”
But when I see a mouse I’m all, “KILL HIM! KILL HIM NOOOOWWWW!”

I know, a life is a life, but a bee just wants to go out into the world and make honey, and I like honey.
But a mouse wants to poop in the utensil drawer — next thing you know, I’m being rushed to the hospital because I have Salmonella from the spoon I used to eat my cereal with.

My freshman year in college, some of the adjacent buildings were having problems with field mice getting into the dorm rooms. My roommate and I had been lucky for most of the year, until one day, our luck ran out.
I was sitting at my computer when I saw something move underneath my desk. I looked down and saw a mouse dart across the room. I screamed so loud it must have scared the mouse because he paused momentarily and then kept running.
My roommate and her then boyfriend (now husband, woo!) set up mouse traps in our room as I clung to the side of our bunk beds for dear life.
I think they even tried to coax me to come down with the same cheese they were putting in the trap, which is just plain mean because they know how much I love cheese.

A few days later, my roomie’s  mom came to visit, and just as they stepped out to grab lunch, the mouse trap snapped and my Left Brain nearly exploded, sending me into a fit of screams, mixed with laughter, mixed with a flood of tears.
Had Stephen King been there, my uncontrollable hysteria might have inspired a character for his next thriller.

I leapt off my chair and darted into the hallway only to bump into my roommate and her mom who returned after hearing me panic. Cool as two cucumbers hanging out in the Humidity Control drawer in your refrigerator, this mother-daughter duo walked into the room, picked up the trap with the dead mouse in it, tossed it into the communal trashcan outside, and then left without saying a word.
For the record — I love you, Jen!

Last night, as I was getting ready for bed after a really intense episode of “The Biggest Loser,” I saw a MASSIVE red ant, like the size of a baby fetus, on the wall above the bathroom. I groaned to myself because I wasn’t in the mood to have a conversation with him so I figured I’d let him be — but then I had a flashback to when I was 11 years old and we were in India and a little red ant bit me on my eye and I woke up all ugly the next day.
I looked at the ant on the wall, which was like 11 times the size of the ant that bit off half my face 14 years ago, and that’s when I decided to get the Raid.

I sprayed him dead and then flushed him down the toilet.
A few minutes later, I’m on the phone with my bff, Tina when I see a GARGANTUAN black spider crawling across the mirror in my bedroom.

Normally, we don’t have so many bugs running around but I think with the intense cleaning I’ve been doing in preparation for my move to L.A., I must be disturbing their homes and now they’re out for revenge.
But boy, was I lucky to have been on the phone with Tina, because she’s always so wise and supportive in moments like these.

Me: Oh my God there is a HUGE spider on the mirror.

Tina: laughs.

Tina: Go get your cup.

Me: sigh.

Me: But now it’s dark outside and I don’t feel like going…Oh my God, I think it’s a Black Widow!

Tina: Eww, you have to kill it.

Me: Oh God, okay. It looks so scary. Okay, I got the Raid. Should I spray it?

Tina: I don’t think Raid kills spiders.

Me: Okay I’m gonna spray.

Tina: Did you ever watch “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” when you were a kid? Of course you did. Well, I was always really scared of spraying bugs with chemicals because I was scared they would turn into some really gross mutant or something like in the show.

Me: WHY WOULD YOU SAY THAT TO ME NOW?

After spraying half the can of Raid on the spider, while yelling, “He won’t die!” into the phone, Tina assured me that he was just experiencing a few after-death spasms.

I can’t tell you how I went from setting a bug free on Monday to killing an ant and a spider (in the same day) just a few days later, but I will tell you that I have a lot more respect for Miss Muffet now. I used to think she was a sissy, but now I’m like, She’s actually more like Mother Teresa.
I mean, when Muffey saw that spider sit down beside her it’s not like she put down her curds and whey, went home to get a can of poison, then came back and sprayed the spider blind.

But come to think of it, I did throw the spider into the recycling bin since it was wrapped in a paper towel, which makes me One with the Green, which is really all that matters because who cares if you murder little innocent beings as long as we’re saving the environment, taking our vitamins, recycling our plastic and not getting eaten by Black Widows.

Lets out a contented sigh.

I think our children will have a really bright future.

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