I slipped into bed late last night, next to Madame, when suddenly she shrilly cried "There's an insect up there!". "So there is" I said and turned over to sleep. A small beetle of some sort was crawling slowly across the ceiling above our heads.
"Well kill it!" she said.
I was not inclined, at that late hour, to embark on dangerous gymnastics so I said "it's okay, just keep your mouth closed until it goes away". Needless to say, this was rejected as a solution. So I found a jar to collect the infiltrator, and released it through the window into the garden.
"Why didn't you squash it" demanded my reclining Princess.
Apart from the fact that leaving a smear of organic chemicals on the ceiling in a difficult place to be cleaned up later, I have uneasy feelings about extinguishing a Life, however insignificant. I fell asleep, wondering why.
It's not spiritual, not even moral: I'll happily squash a mosquito which tries to rob me of my sleep. But not without a brief thought about the miniscule brain that takes input from some sensors and co-ordinates the flight of this tiny insect towards a source of food (my blood), and a set of tools to extract it.
What is the difference between a dead insect, and a living insect?
A living insect follows ZoeB's 3 rules:
- Eat
- Don't get eaten
- Reproduce
If the insect is squashed, all the same molecules and chemicals remain present, for a while. So what goes away?
Life.
I don't have any other answer.