Today I saved the life of a fly. My partner was waving something around to try and get it. He thought that it would lay eggs in the house, which didn't make sense because its totally spotless. I interveined, and he quieted down. It didn't get it at first, But after being still for awhile it landed again, and I very slowly cupped it in my hand. I had my partner open the door and I let it out. I felt at peace, that is why it trusted me. Prior to this I had never caught a fly like that.

I hear you! Each person that wishes to foster life must ask themselves if they are doing everything they reasonably can to avoid killing.

-David Z. Mason

WWW.RawFoodFarm.com

David,
What is the name of the insect duster/saver? The jains use that to gently move flies and other creatures. I would like to get one, or make one. I imagine that hair and some fiber on a stick would be good.

I put a jar or plastic container over them and gently slide a firm flat thing underneath (like a book), then take them outside.

Yeah I used to have anxiety over killing them - like hurting myself inside but stopped that years ago.

Cheers mislu!

Sometimes when I bump into an insect I take it to a better place such as outside -and sometimes I don't take it anywhere; I just leave it alone but I like to tell the little guys that they're lucky it's me!

Ok ok.. I too save bugs but !
I still kill fruit flies when they try to become part of my diet and mosquitos on sight. The morals of this become fairly obscure when you think about it.
If you allow bugs free reign of your garden you end up with rotten veges. If you save a fly from a spider you are starving a beautifull spider.

I believe that the key issue is not the action but the intention.

Mislu,

It's nice to know that you have love for small creatures, even an insect as small as a fly! That's great!

davidzanemason,

You're indeed a wise man. =)

All the Best,
Wong

Yayyy Mislu!

I love insects. People are always so eager to kill flies, call them ugly and disgusting, but in the light, they are beautiful creatures, kind of incredible to look at up close.

This is one of those spider catcher thingies:

[www.iwantoneofthose.com]

(it's a UK site, but I think most gadget shops have them)

We don't have poisonous spiders here in the UK, so I pick them up in my hand or use a glass.

Catching flies- try shutting the curtains and allowing light to come through one window only. The fly will fly to it. Gently overlay the curtain over it and sneak in your glass sideways to catch it and slide the paper underneath.

The reviews on the spider catcher thingy are hilarious. I don't think they are written by real people, though, but by the company's copywriter. They all sound alike.

I confess I kill spiders when they are in the house because they might be poisonous. I found one the other day that looked like it might have been a brown recluse. Don't take any chances with those!

Greenie,
I found a centipede one night crawling on the floor, it was large and perhaps poisonous. BUt when it came close I just gently tapped the carpet near it, and it found its way somewhere else.

I let a slug share my apartment a number of years. I loved seeing its trail all over the room. One night I woke up to feel something on my face. It was the slug, it was quite large. I just laughed inside and set in on the carpet and went to sleep again.

Mislu,

You sound like a kind soul. I used to have no tolerance for insects of any kind inside my home but like with so many things, I've come full circle.

My two children are especially unnerved by them and I'm trying to teach them that insects are God's creatures just like us. We live in a lovely new house on a gorgeous creek lot and have bugs everywhere! I tell my kids that they were here first and that we're in fact living in THEIR home.

Cheers to you!

David

Mislu,

A chiropractor I know was bitten by a brown recluse spider while he was asleep in his bed. No chance to 'gently tap the carpet'. It was on his arm and the first bite half woke him, he reflexively brushed at it and it kept biting up his arm.

FYI, brown recluse spider bites can cause necrosis of the tissue. Google brown recluse spider bites and be prepared for some gruesome pictues.

That happened to him. He had multiple surgeries to the arm to remove the necrotic tissues, finally thought he was ok but then some months later started having heart problems. The venom had gone to his heart and necroded a valve. He had open heart surgery to replace the valve and has been ok ever since.

I'm okay with killing anything that looks like a brown recluse.

I live in a rural area around homes that have lots of horses and cows and goats. In the summer I get loads of flies flying in my house. I have to kill them. They land on everything and puke on what ever they land on. I tries the screen door and that ended up breaking but I will try that again. I also got some local apples that were full of worms so I had to toss them. I think there has to be a control of the insects. Since I have been raw I hate killing the flys but I feel it is necessary and when a misquito is sucking my blood I will kill it. When I start my garden next year I will figure out a way to control the bugs and slugs there also. I think if I only had one fly in my house I would save it rather than kill it but I get hundreds sometimes. I may evolve to a less killing attitude but I really don't like the flys sitting on me and where ever they sit they barf. Its just gross

early one spring we got to the bottom of our woodpile
which was about 5 feet from the bed, only to find a
rattle. . . what we didn't know certainly didnt hurt
us.

I'm too empathetic to kill insects--I have a difficult enough time harvesting herbs sometimes. :-P One good thing is that my husband has gradually become a bit more empathetic and now he takes some pride in capturing insects and releasing them outside. :-)

I tend to ask the insects to please find another place to be when they are in my home. I've given them all permission to live behind the walls in the finished basement and I've asked them to please not come out or else they'll be removed and have a lot of work to get back into the house. :-P

Love,

Gypsy

You guys are so sweet! I recently helped a few bees outside, that flew into my home. I have no compassion for flys, spiders or ants.

Tell me.. is a chicked evil or amoral ? Is a chicken anti life ?
Because they kill and kill and kill bugs ! Or are animals excluded from the morality of actions ?

I don't mean to be cynical because I do respect all creatures great and small. It just seems that placing moral emphasis on the killing of bugs may be self detrimental ?

Lightform:

-Its not whether killing is endemic in the system (been dying to work in the word endemic.....) but whether EACH INDIVIDUAL is doing everything one can to reasonably avoid it (if you believe in that sort of thing). So no worries - eh?

-David Z. Mason

WWW.RawFoodFarm.com

Hi David
I believe in harmony, and peace, but should you save a gazelle from a starving lion ? Is it compassionate to own a cat which detroys birdlife and other small critters ? Where would you draw the line and what actualy defines caring ?

I kill ticks because they are in my house and on my family and pets and can cause life threatening disease. I don't poisen them. I drown them. Mosquitos are the same. Life threatening. I try not to kill any. You don't have to kill a brown recluse or blackwidow just take them where they can live without endangering anyone. It is the one you don't see that will get you. I find black widows often outside. I am lucky, I live where I can take them deep into the woods and try to find a covered place for them. They are so patient. they never move while I carry them on a stick or something. I think they are amazing to look at. They are so shiny and black with that perfect red shape on them. I used to be afraid of cockroaches and they always chased me. Until I was grown I would run screaming. Now I talk nicely to them and catch them and put them out. They don't chase me anymore. I realized when my kids were freaking at the sight of a roach I had to change my silly behavior. Roaches are just scared little animals. The difference between a chicken killing a bug and me killing a bug is I am not doing out of instinctual survival. I am a vegetarian thay are not. I have been given either the gift or the curse of deeper thought. I have never seen a chicken kill for pure sport.

Light:

Don't depersonalize! LOL. YOU can't control the lion...only your own example. And don't use the example of the system as it exists to set the stage for unknown new behaviors. Well....you CAN do all those things if you want to.....heh..heh.....

-You can't judge what's right for you by the behavior of a cat! If YOU think it's good to kill bugs....I encourage you to do so......but it's a losing fight!

-David Z. Mason

WWW.RawFoodFarm.com

I agree..the most facinating concept - to me - is the ability for US having the 'evolutionary' ability to set the stage for what is acceptable...for whatever other folks - or members of the animal kingdom or whatever - that might have the ability to shift their paradigm to our example. at some point.

Its like...you can see yourself in nature, or you can change YOUR nature..and thus change nature.

the first is..uh..rather easy to rationalize most things.


I do see what you are getting at lightform...in fact I had similar thoughts when someone in another thread said they were afraid to eat lettuce due to potentially eating micro-bugs or something.

>>If you allow bugs free reign of your garden you end up with rotten veges.

but it is like David said...endemic to our necessity to have a control over our land/food source/animal brothers.

i'm not saying we up and stop ALL our ways (we certainly and unavoidable [at this point] benefit from many mechanisms of various degrees od 'doing harm')...but its a paradigm to be conscious of...even if one chooses to kill any 'pests' on site which I agree is comparatively...closer to dharma then..OJ Simpson...for sure!

David
Thank you

Anaken
Mmmm.. maybe we are part of nature changing itself ?
Maybe the culmination of the emphasis on saving bugs is the eventual adoption a completely harm free existence ?

Lightform,

It sounds strange, but no matter what you do you will always have some animals in your diet. The best tasting fruit I have ever eaten was "Infested" with sometype of larva. At first I was taken aback. I didn't know what do to. Save the creature? I couldn't really do that, I didn't have another place to put it, as if I placed it somewhere else it would have died, its home was inside the fruit. So eating it is killing it, but trying to save it is also killing it.

I would agree with you the ethics of these things are very, very elusive. Your intent is what is what matters, thats true.

So, if you save a fly from a spider, yes you are starving the the spider. In the same way you could provide a meal for a mosquito by letting it suck your blood. I have seen photos of jain saints meditating, letting mosquitos feed on them, feed on them by the thousands, letting them have a meal from their blood. A lot of people think that many mosquitos would kill a person from loss of blood, but from my knowledge that person did that for years.

Lifeform,
The law of ahimsa is so very relative. I have eskimo heritage, and the culture is dependent upon animals for almost everything. Food, clothing, tools, even housing material. From a certain perspective that should be ok for even the most stict vegan, fruitarian, vegetarian. They try and let things be.

The elders always advocated minimal impact of the environment, take only what you truely need, and make the most use out of everything. The old stories even speaks of eating minimally, stop eating before your really full. The healthiest people I know follow these things. I truly believe you can be healthy on a completely fruit diet, I also believe you can be healthy on an almost entirely animal based diet. As long as you obey the law of ahimsa as you know it.

I also don't usually kill anything. There were 3 then 4 flies in my room until a couple of Sundays ago. They stayed for days. The fourth one came in I guess when I had the door open for the other three to hopefully get the hint! Then the typhoon came that Sunday, and then the flood, so I opened the window for me to get out! The flies got out somehow. I let them stay for several days. I was as patient as I could be. Most of the time I was really patient. But there were a few times when I did try to kill them. Couldn't bring myself to use the rubber bands on them though. Tried to catch them several times but failed. Mosquitoes are another. I am usually patient with them. There are times though when I lose patience and try to kill them. As with other animals, I am only about 10% successful when I do try.

Some people say that to care about animal rights when there are so many problems amongst humans is to have our priorities out of whack. I disagree. I don't see why compassion for other animals is incompatible with compassion for other people. And compassion for the plant world too. Why not? And how about things we call inanimate? I myself don't want to break or destroy anything out of fun. This last one though, for me, is more about my own internal state of mind than out of a strong sense of compassion for a piece of wood or a rock. I mean, to destroy, I don't want to do that. I'll "rescue" an insect if I see it alive in a spider web that has obviously been abandoned. In a way, I believe there is something probably "right" that this has happened to the insect. But for years I've really felt sad for the little critter. Just sentimentalism? Fine. I have no reservations about being a sentimental critter myself.

Having said this, it does seem in a way, inconsistent that I still sometimes eat and drink non-vegan things. This is one that I've been working on for years. One of the hardest. It's much easier for me to be calm with a mosquito than to be calm in the face of certain foods and drinks. Time, intention, and acceptance. Eventually ....

Thanks Mislu for starting this thread. And to everyone for your contributions. Like this one.



This way is not compatible with Zen practice. This way IS Zen practice. - Dr. Doug Graham

Nothing whatsoever should be attached to. - Buddha



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/29/2007 05:13PM by TroySantos.

Mmmm... all good points.
I think the real issue is the consideration. I think that any action made with the motive of caring and respect probably justifies itself. All the other aspects probably don't matter.

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/30/2007 03:14AM by la_veronique.

since I have been eating raw foods it seems that my awarness for our environment has changed. I have become more thoughtfull of the environment. When I have a house full of flies I put up the fly tape and kill them. I am sorry I have to kill them its like I am saying a prayer of forgiveness when I do. I could take other precautions to keep the flys out of the house and I have tried but due to carelesness of doors and windows being opened they come right in. way to many to have in the house. If it were just one fly thats o.k. for me but 100 flies is really out of control. They don't listen when I tell them to leave. lol When I have a garden I will not kill them but I may get other bugs that eat the ones I dont want or just move the slugs. there are things we can do if we think instead of react and take some time to work around the insects. On the other hand I live in washington state and dont have to deal with poisness insects. That to me is another story. But one thing is for sure something has happened to me since I have become raw and I am changing and have become more thoughtfull for our environment.

I don't tolerate flies either. I don't want them landing on my food after first landing on animal dung. Not to mention, my Mom became extremely ill after eating fruit that evidently hosted fruit fly larvae.

Thankfully, all our windows are screened. Once in a while a fly makes it through the doggie door by riding on the backs of my dogs.

And what about fleas? I loathe fleas. What do you do for a flea infestation? You can't save them. At least I wouldn't! LOL



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/30/2007 05:34AM by roxeli.