The last couple of weeks as I take back my garden, my number one task has been to round up and kill hundreds of snails. They have overtaken every inch of my garden, eating plants, even those they never touched before, like my bougainvilleas.
As I collect and kill all these snails a very troubling question comes to mind. What if these snails are a highly developed civilization and they see me as this all-powerful giant that has come to their home and is out to destroy their way of life? Oh my God, I could be committing genocide! After a few seconds of pondering this very troubling question, I decided that this is a much too complex question for my human brain to process. Snails
“are evil and they must be destroyed.” I must seek them out from their hiding places and kill every one of them. Their aim is to destroy my garden and I will not let them. I will stop at nothing until I kill every last one of them first.
As I extract this enemy combatant from my garden and become their judge, jury, and executioner, a second question comes to mind. What is the most humane way to kill them, since I don’t have a Guantanamo to ship them too? After all, these are God’s creatures. I can smash them with a hammer as I used to do but that seems a cruel and unusual punishment (and very messy) for a humanist like me to inflict on one of God’s creations. A bucket full of water is definitely a more humane solution to my snail problem.
As I write this posting tonight the third, most troubling, question comes to mind. What if in this vast universe of ours we are the snails in someone else’s garden?
As I collect and kill all these snails a very troubling question comes to mind. What if these snails are a highly developed civilization and they see me as this all-powerful giant that has come to their home and is out to destroy their way of life? Oh my God, I could be committing genocide! After a few seconds of pondering this very troubling question, I decided that this is a much too complex question for my human brain to process. Snails
“are evil and they must be destroyed.” I must seek them out from their hiding places and kill every one of them. Their aim is to destroy my garden and I will not let them. I will stop at nothing until I kill every last one of them first.
As I extract this enemy combatant from my garden and become their judge, jury, and executioner, a second question comes to mind. What is the most humane way to kill them, since I don’t have a Guantanamo to ship them too? After all, these are God’s creatures. I can smash them with a hammer as I used to do but that seems a cruel and unusual punishment (and very messy) for a humanist like me to inflict on one of God’s creations. A bucket full of water is definitely a more humane solution to my snail problem.
As I write this posting tonight the third, most troubling, question comes to mind. What if in this vast universe of ours we are the snails in someone else’s garden?
3 comments:
Those poor snails. I'm sure if you didn't kill them something else would have munch on them! It's a scary thought to think we can be something else's little toys to do away with.
I have the same problem in my garden, snails, snails and more snails. I try not to think too much as I smash them with a stone... I'ts either that or eat them (yes, we do eat snails in Portugal...and they taste good! ;-) )
LOL Snails are the bane of my gardening life too but I have also trouble with erm disposing them. My solution? I release them in the wild (fill a bucket with snails and bring them to a park or what have you and release them there). If that's not humane then I don't know what is.:-)
Happy snail hunting, Rusty!
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