Peaceful Coexistence

I HAD TO KILL ANOTHER ANT TODAY. I suppose it's a fact of life, living in Dunster House. Ants are pretty much permanent residents here. They're not big, ugly ants--just tiny, innocuous red ones. They don't come in big swarms--they're individuals. But they're a little like God. They're everywhere.

You'll open a book, and an ant will be crawling on the page. You'll reach for your coffee mug, and an ant will be exploring the inside. Ants run across your hand as you type. They inch down the mirror as you brush your teeth. They're tiny specks moving across the TV, and little tickles on your ear as you talk on the phone.

Usually, I can ignore them. But sometimes I get disgusted, reach for the kleenex, and murder them in cold blood: Miss Weiss, with the Tissue, in the Common Room.

I always feel rotten afterwards.

I didn't always have a problem with killing bugs. When I was little, I was pretty cruel to insects. I slaughtered ants by the thousands. I poured salt on slugs and watched them dissolve. I thrilled at the "bzzzt" sound of my neighbors' bug zapper electrocuting scores of Japanese beetles. I saw it as sort of a competition--the people against the bugs. (The people always seemed to win.)

Now, I no longer have any desire to terrorize insects. It's not that I don't mind bugs--I do. The idea of camping outside repulses me, and the thought of a cockroach in my bathroom disgusts me. I refuse to coexist with them. But I don't want to kill them.

Instead, if I see a spider in my bedroom, I'll make a little agreement with it. I'll inform it (sometimes telepathically, sometimes out loud) that I'm about to leave the room. I'll warn it to disappear from sight. And usually, when I return, I won't see it anymore. I'll pretend it was never there.

It takes a little longer with some bugs. They don't seem to get the picture. Last summer, as I was crawling into bed, I spotted a big, black spider on the ceiling. He was a pretty intimidating insect, but it was late, and I was tired. I didn't want to leave the room. I also didn't want the spider to crawl on me. So I kept the light on, lay awake in bed, and worked hard on the telepathy.

The spider crawled slowly across the ceiling. Sometimes he crawled toward me. That was when I got worried. I'm a little skeptical of bugs crawling sideways and upside down. I don't have that much faith in their sticking. I've always theorized that it's a mind-over-matter thing, and that once a spider realizes he's violating every law of gravity I can think of, he'll topple to the ground.

I don't want to be under him when that happens.

Maybe he was just in a cruel mood, and felt like teasing me. He'd crawl towards me. He'd crawl away. He'd crawl toward me again. Finally, I left the room to go to the bathroom. When I got back, he was gone. I slept in peace.

Sure, I could have saved myself some stress--and earned myself some sleep--by rolling up a magazine and smacking him into oblivion. But I think this was a better system for both of us. The spider got to live. And I didn't have to take its life away.

CLEARLY, SOME PEOPLE DERIVE PLEASURE from killing bugs. It becomes a kind of game. And there's a market for new and improved ways to wreak havoc on the insect world.

As I was waiting in line in the drugstore last month, I happened to glance at one of the display racks. By the flyswatters and bugsprays was a "Fly Gun." It looked like a little water gun, except it shot out a piece of plastic mesh attached to a rope. The idea, I guess, was to aim and fire at flying insects. At least, that's what the bright, flashy label seemed to suggest.

"Fast! Easy! Fun!" it said. "A great gift!"

I can't imagine a more awful present.

Last December, my brother came up with a brilliant gift idea. I think he found it in a Sharper Image catalog. It was similar to the Fly Gun, but a little more technologically advanced. It was the Fly Gun of the Nineties: a "Bug Vac."

I never saw it. But from my brother's description, it consisted of a vaccum-cleaner-type machine attached to a long, thin cord. You found a bug on the wall, and you pulled the cord over. Then, you sucked it up.

"Fwoop," my brother had said, in illustration. "It's perfect for you--you hate to kill bugs. Don't you want it?"

"No," I had told him. He couldn't understand why not.

Some facts about bugs: They make up a huge portion of the biomass (the total mass of everything living on Earth.) There are more species of insects than of any other animal. The cockroach has been around a lot longer than humans or even dinosaurs, and would survive a nuclear blast. Charlotte's Web was a great book. Bugs--at least in my experience--understand telepathy.

Plus, they're alive. They build complex webs, hives and burrows, and they have kids. They're smaller than us. They can't cry out for help or reason with us. And if it's a competition, I'd say we have a pretty unfair advantage.

Bugs aren't perfect, by a long shot. They're ugly, dirty and unsanitary. They really don't belong in a dorm room. But if an ugly, dirty, unsanitary person came through a crack in my bathroom wall, I don't think I'd deal him a death blow. I'd open the window and give him a chance to get out.

It's a little like God.

Joanna M. Weisss knows the difference between insects and arachnids. She has no problems with earthworms.