July 14th, 2006
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Life and death in the house of Ventura
I don’t like killing things, anything. If I can avoid it, I’ll usually do what it takes to place the living thing out of harm’s way (or at least out of my way). For instance, there are a significant number of spiders that share my domicile. While I do not collect rent from them, we do seem to have a sort of mutual understanding that if I don’t make their lives difficult, they don’t bite me, despite the fact that enjoy scaling the east wall right around the area where my head rests in the loft. I suppose if they were larger than a nickel, I might be bothered. But despite jumping prowess, their diminutive size makes it easy for me to classify them as not worth really thinking about. Slightly farther along the scale of tolerance, I found a slug oozing along my hardwood floor next to my bed a couple weeks ago. While normally associated with gardens, I can only assume the sizeable monopod wandered into my home at just the right time when I had a window open to prune my mint. Slugs are very difficult to move; since they are invertebrates any attempt to slide something like paper underneath them frequently causes some sort of physical anguish, resulting in a compacted and emotionally distressed slug. However, I did my best and then took the panicking slimy fellow outside to place him under the railing by the front door. It’s very trying to coax a slug from one surface to another, and you don’t have the liberty of just shaking or brushing him off. Still, I consider my patience in the matter commendable.
On the other side of the coin, there are some creatures which I simply will not tolerate in my home, the most common of which is our garbage-devouring friend the cockroach. These little lovelies have the misfortune of being stupid enough to crawl up my bathroom drain pipe and into my house about three or four times a year, despite the abundance of poison traps I have scattered around the kitchen and bathroom. However, if one manages to navigate the gauntlet of insect land mines into my actual home, they are summarily extinguished with all the might of a rolled magazine, fueled by the personal offense I take that such a filthy creature would dare defile the sanctity of my home. It’s insulting because of how fastidiously I keep my dwelling free of crumbs, spills, open containers, and vagrant odors.
The most morally trying of dilemmas in my home is of course the dead center of the issue, and in the end the real crux of all life. I must kill to live. Whether plants having feelings or not and being a vegetarian is spiritually sound is a lesser detail, but the point is that organic creatures must eat organic matter, which since it is organic was at one point in time alive. Many people eat out. Some people cook at home. But most people who eat do so when the thing they are eating has been killed or processed before they received it (animals). However, occasionally we kill the things we eat in our own home. And if the things we kill show signs of life while we are preparing them, it is all too clear exactly what is going on.
I occasionally put shijimi (tiny shellfish) in my bean paste soup. I buy them at the store, fresh, and they are refrigerated until I cook. When I intend to use them, I take them out of the cellophane and place them into a bowl of water for about two hours, during which they instinctively assume they are safe, back in the ocean again, and open their tightly sealed shells to expel sand and take in nutrition. So, I have a bowl full of tiny little shellfish clapping, blubbing contentedly in tap water, expelling sand and stretching their soon to be consumed meaty feet. After they have sufficiently purged, I dump out the water and wash the debris from the shells, shocking them into closing up tight again. Then it’s just a boiling pot of water and in they go. Within seconds the searing temperature kills them popping their shells open, their tender flesh which moments ago was living an undisturbed existence, now only boiled meat. I can’t tell you how this bothers me in tautly macabre sense.
No, I do not have to eat animals to survive. However, a variety of cheap and readily available ingredients in my diet does give me a stronger body, and a more contented existence. Still, there are a lot of things to consider, one of which is if I don’t buy those shellfish and eat them, they may pass the expiration date and be thrown out, and then their death would still occur but be meaningless. This is not an argument for eating animals though. I’m just saying that bringing death to things in general bothers me. But, as Robert clearly pointed out, just because I have to kill things, that doesn’t mean I have to like it. And perhaps that is the most important part. For being the sentient and highly intelligent creatures that we are, we have a responsibility to be cognizant of the consequences and motivations of our actions.
As the great Dalai Lama said (paraphrased), “Even I have sinned against a few mosquitoes.”
