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Do You Deliberately Kill Living Beings?

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17:50 / 03.06.05

I am a mobile spider killzone.

I don't like the fuckers and if one enters my field of vision either I'm leaving the room or it's leaving the mortalisphere. Same with flies.

Ants and moths I have no beef with but they usually get the shoo out the door.

I did kill a bat once, though, when I was eight. Accidentally, mind - and I did feel a bit crap after the fright had worn off.

17:56 / 03.06.05

I think the reason I don't kill anything mammalian is the fact that I cannot relate to spiders/insects in any way, shape or form. They're alien, truly horrifically fucking alien (to me) and they creep me the hell out. If anything killing 'em is more to preserve my own peace of mind than anything else.

Cats and dogs? Well, at least I know they feel something analogous to human emotion, having owned a pooch. Raw empathy at work.

14:55 / 04.06.05

I've pretty much tried to stop doing the random killing number. Occasionally, even when I'm outside, I'll just stomp on an ant and then wonder exactly why the hell I just did it.

The only thing I will kill without hesitation/mercy are flies. I used to live in an apartment where one of my roommates would bring home every stray cat she came across. This eventually resulted in 12 cats inside of a small two-bedroom. Cat shit everywhere=flies everywhere. Ugh. A certain amount of distaste for them has stayed with me since then.

Bees I also used to kill when they would make it into the house. My ex-roommates' kid was allergic to them, so it was either take the time to shoo them out of the house and possibly have them sting the kid, or just kill them.

Shiny: Well Over Thirty

20:30 / 04.06.05

I won’t kill anything larger than a flee deliberately, and if I find I’ve killed an insect or some such creature accidentally then I become overwhelmed with guilt for quite some time, empathising with the poor thing, imagining me being crushed into oblivion arbitrarily by some awful incomprehensibly huge alien entity. I will even go to the lengths of physically preventing close friends and family members from killing spiders and other harmless creatures in my presence, often lovingly gathering up mouse sized house spiders and risking being stung in order to capture wasps, just so I can get them away from the human fiends who wish them ill.

I do make an exception for anything which I feel presents a serious physical threat to my well being or that of my loved ones or pets. The reason I kill flees is because although she’s sadly no longer with us, my parents had a cat while I was in my teens who was allergic to flees and she would become extremely ill if infested with them – so I’m now thoroughly desensitised to flee death. Also anything I think might be poisonous is fair game – especially the thin mutated elongated orange and black flying insect with the stinger/tail which looked vaguely syringe like that once chased me round the living room. I never found out what it was but it really had to die and it laughed off rolled up newspapers – and indeed the fact it was that formidable that it took four blows from a hammer at my full strength on a hard floor before it stopped moving made me feel somewhat justified in killing it.

Weirdly and totally amorally really I suppose given my hatred of killing tiny little insects I am not a vegetarian – I try to justify this with the argument that killing something for food is morally superior to killing something because it annoys you. Which I’m not at all convinced is valid – but I guess I’m something of a lazy hypocrite in that regard – I’m quite capable of forgetting that my chicken and bacon sandwich once some poor chickens and pigs and perhaps I shouldn’t be.

Jake, Colossus of Clout

22:03 / 05.06.05

I hate spiders and kill them mercilessly. Same with wasps, mosquitoes and black flies. Anything that lives in my house that stings or bites is going to get it as soon as I become aware of its existence. there are plenty of other creatures I hate that I would like to kill but don't (any other insect minus butterflies, rats, cats, neoconservatives) because, distasteful as I might find them, they are not going to bite me and give me a massive rash and/or boil, and thus I allow them to continue living, against my better judgment.

23:26 / 05.06.05

I think killing something just because it gets on your nerves is probably all right - In a godless universe, why not ?

( As I type this, the cops are closing in. I've just got time for a last cig, a shot, I'm reloading the rifle, and then after that, let the devil take the hindmost ! )

I have a degree from a bloody good college.

But not an Oxbridge one, crucially - that's going to turn out to be the police's fatal mistake.

Because they won't be able to reason with me, really.

And now they're here.

'Mr Alex, are you prepared to lay your guns down ?'

'Yeah, yeah, of course... Ha ha, I think I got two of them, I... Oh dear...'

Whisky Priestess

11:17 / 06.06.05

I kill very small flies (i.e. small enough not to leave a horrible crunchy smear on my hands, which are my fly-killing weapons of choice) but only if they persist in flying in front of my PC screen.

I kill moth grubs if I possibly can because if they want to eat my cashmere sweaters, they can fucking well pay for them too.

I KILL KILL HATE KILL mosquitos with a fanatical vigour. They are welcome to my blood, and I can even cope with the itching bites, but I cannot bear their tinnitus whine. I can't sleep if I know there's one in the room (that's my retirement in the Med out then) and have spent entire nights stalking the bedroom with a haunted expression and a rolled-up newpaper. (They make sticky splats if full so hands are not ideal.)

I hate them so much that my sister once printed out and gave me a copy of the DH Lawrence poem "Mosquito". True.

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