I feel bad about killing things.  Even bugs.  A fly just landed on my desk at work, and I quickly swatted it with a credit card bill.  It stopped moving, but I wasn't sure if it was dead or not (maybe it was in shock, or in a pre-vegetative state), so I crushed it between two pieces of paper.  I'd hate for a bug that didn't deserve death in the first place to have to suffer at the hands of a weak, stupid bi-ped.  I felt justified in killing this particular organism because of my recent experience with a fly at work.  Flies tend to be annoying.  And apparently they're very hearty specimens.  I won't miss that fly, but I hope his family will be ok without him. 

My disgust for bugs often overrides my feelings about killing them.  Most bugs aren't doing anything wrong.  In fact, they're probably doing something to help me.  Spiders are the bugs I fear and loathe the most, but they're probably the most useful because they kill all the other bugs.  House centipedes (what some people incorrectly call silverfish) eat spiders, bedbugs, termites, and cockroaches.  They're probably the best bug to keep around, except for the fact that they have many, many legs and they give me chills.  So I kill them.  I feel almost offended that a bug would choose my house for its residence.  I didn't invite it.  I didn't ask it to come live with me and kill my other bugs.  Therefore, it must die.  Same with people (kidding). 

I guess the determining factor is:  Can I find a reason to kill it?  If I can, I seem to get over my feelings.  My house has a few mice living in the walls.  I'd be perfectly fine with that, except that they're probably chewing on wires and destroying things.  If my house burns down because some dumb little mouse chewed some wires, I'm gonna be pissed.  So I feel justified in setting up a few mousetraps.  I went with the snap-down kind, not the sticky fly paper, because I want it to be quick and relatively painless.  Sticky paper never quite made sense to me.  After you catch the mouse, you can either choose to (a) listen to its poor little screams, or (b) take it outside and hit it with a shovel. 

I even feel bad about killing some plants.  My neighbor approached me a few months ago about cutting down the big oak trees between his house and mine.  I think his rationale was that the oak trees were annoying because of all their leaves and acorns.  I didn't agree to anything, so the trees are still there.  Even though I'm annoyed by the billions of acorns littering my lawn, I don't feel justified in cutting down the tree.  It just doesn't seem fair.  The tree didn't do anything wrong.  The tree was probably there before my house was.  My feeling is that unless the tree poses some sort of physical risk (like it's about to fall on my house or its roots are growing into my foundation), I don't really have the right to do anything to it. #nature