I should be silent. I should fear the approbation I will pull down upon my head by my confession. But silence is no longer an option. Silence only emboldens the despots that fund, encourage and order torture as a state policy. Though I must accept responsibility for my own choice to bow to their authority, until we reform the institutions of torture, though I and others may leave the torturers’ ranks, the evil will continue. They taught me deception to capture my prey and to then inflict confinement, isolation, sustenance deprivation, chemical poisoning and finally impalement. How did they corrupt my heart, ensuring years of service and blind acquiescence to their orders? They employed the mother of all extortions: my children.
Every fall it starts. While settling in for four months of football, one of them will appear in the rec room, hovering over my Laz-Z-Boy, demanding help to locate, capture, kill then display numerous six-legged creatures as an offering to their teacher. Goaded on by the fear they will fail grade school and never leave home, I rise from my throne barking out orders. Get the net! Man the jars! Retrieve the cotton balls! Bring the alcohol! When all is fetched, we’re off to the swamp park.
Soon we’re catching bugs. I’m about to toss an alcohol-soaked-cotton ball in the first bug jar when one bug turns her brown, moist eyes on me. Another deftly rolls on his back and gently waves his little multi-jointed, exoskeletal legs and antennae imitating our cuddly Pit Bull, Rascal. While another, flying up and down in the jar, motions to me, simpering, "Please. I have children." That’s it. I can’t do it. I can’t kill such resourceful creatures. Then the vision of kids who never leave home again pops into my mind.
Maybe, I suggest, my son can turn in live specimens. So, with Noah as our inspiration, we try packing them all live into our two jars. Surely if two of every animal on earth can coexist on a cramped Ark for 40 days, we can get 12 different bugs into our jars. But I’m wrong. The bugs don’t cooperate. As a new one’s placed in, another escapes. A frisky Praying Mantis starts taste testing his cell mates. We have no choice--some of the bugs must die so others may live. But which? I decide to discriminate: biting, common and ugly bugs get the death penalty; cute, colorful, fascinating bugs get life-behind bars with the possibility of parole. Explaining this to my nine-year-old son, he pulls himself up to his full 48 inches. Tenting his hands before him and boring into me with his eyes he states, "Many who live deserve death, and many who die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Do not be so eager to deal out death and judgment."
Hmmm. The words sear my soul like Sting biting into Shelob’s bloated abdomen. So I count to ten. While sparing the ladybugs, butterflies and praying mantis, I cotton-ball the flies, mosquitoes, wasps and beetles. Instantly they begin to twitch, then slowly die. I feel terrible. Hence this confession and epiphany: why not combine science and art? Let the kids catch them, photograph or draw them, and then set Willie free. Is this too much to ask? No, I plead, please, for the love of Albert Schweitzer, don’t make me torture again next fall--in bug collecting merge the disciplines of art and science!
Loren M. Lambert September 13, 2003
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