I have a conflicted relationship with small crawling things.
Ants? I have no problem spraying them with poison, even as I know I’m probably releasing toxins into my kitchen. I’ll take that risk if it clears my house of the tiny invaders.
Ticks? They definitely need to go. I’m repulsed by the fat little bean-shaped insects with stubby wiggling legs. I drown them with the glee of an unrepentant exterminator.
I should kill cockroaches, but I can’t stand the crunch of their exoskeletons under my foot. I let them scurry away, and hope the evil glance I shoot them is enough to keep them from coming back.
I have mixed feelings about rodents. I’ve had mice and rats as pets, but I don’t wish to share my home with the uncaged variety. Still, the snap of traps on their tiny necks fills me with pity, and the ensuing chore of disposing of their corpses turns my stomach. I’m not above paying neighbor children to empty mousetraps.
I scoop up spiders and take them outside, unless they’re in the bathtub, in which case I send them to a watery grave. I’m remorseful as I watch them swirl around the drain, but not enough to rescue them.
I leave bees alone, because I recognize the urgency of saving them in order to save the planet. Butterflies get a pass also because their lacy, powdery wings fill me with a mix of tenderness and aversion. It’s not love of nature nearly as much as it is revulsion at the idea of smashed bug bodies which will need to be scraped off of shoes, floors, or walls.
At school however, I’m fierce in my protection of animals.
June bugs terrify me. I’ve seen children tie a thin piece of thread to them and fly them like little living kites. On the school playground, however, I squeal and run along with my students, unsure if stories of these bugs tangling themselves into people’s hair are truth or urban legend. I draw the line at squashing them though, or letting my students do so.
“That’s not nice!” I reprimand.
I began voicing forceful defense of most living things a few years ago, when I had a particularly difficult class. I watched them at recess one day; the tone and pitch of their voices indicated that they were embroiled in conflict. I looked for a soccer ball – the usual source of dispute – in the center of the frenzied group. Seeing no ball, I strode over to the knot of kids just in time to see the ringleader bring his heavy foot down on a mole in one last final lethal stomp.
I was appalled by the enthusiasm on their faces, the fact that no one tried to stop them or told an adult. The class discussion that followed was sober.
I evaluated my students’ relationship with nature. Although I was a free-range child, growing up walking among the flora and fauna of the local foothills, the majority of the students in my class were apartment dwellers. Some were dog owners, and a few had pet birds or even chickens, but most of them got no closer to nature than their mothers’ potted plants. I had to create a class culture of kindness to animals, the only exception being the occasional cockroach that crawled out of a backpack or through an open window. Those are still fair game.
Somehow, far too many children make it through elementary school without seeing the beauty of a dew-covered spider web or understanding the life cycle of a frog or butterfly. I worry that they will throw rocks at the birds nesting in the roof eaves, squash bugs for the sheer glee of it, or worse, stomp another unsuspecting rodent to death. I worry that casual violence toward animals will translate into casual violence toward people.
This spring, our campus has been inundated with fuzzy caterpillars. The students were alternately charmed or repulsed. To be frank, I wasn’t going to pick one up — my enthusiasm is tempered by dread — but I showed a video clip of metamorphosis. Watching the transformation of caterpillar to butterfly fills them with wonder.
To my great joy, a caterpillar recently attached itself to a roof beam and began to spin its cocoon. We watch the process, and I have great relief of knowing that because it’s “our” caterpillar, no one will throw a stone to dislodge it. Instead, we check its progress each day as we walk to lunch and I watch even my toughest students cheer for its eventual emergence as a butterfly.
I’m still wary of most crawling things, but I keep my reactions in check around my students. Instead, we, along with our caterpillar, go through metamorphosis together.
