#shownomercy

Blessed are the merciful for they shall be shown mercy.  Matthew 5: 7

I have made enemies in the last two months, or rather, some have made enemies of me.

We have moths.  Plural. Plurality of plural.  An infestation.   And I hate them.  They came from the fruit trees, and they have been everywhere.  I thought ants were bad (and they can be), but these guys fluttered out when I open cupboard doors, silverware drawers, closet spaces, computer cases and compost bins.  They've been hanging out on our "big screen," aka a white sheet with a curtain rod run through the hem, and spotting our walls, door frames and living room drapes.  I've found them in the towels, the sheets, and the shower.  (#mottephobia) They land in my sink at night, and I find them there, twitching spasmodically in the last vestiges of the dishwater when I got up to make breakfast (#tinyzombieswithwings)

There are two reasons that moths are worse than ants in my book, at least on this scale.  The first is that ants can serve a purpose.  Sure, they might get into the sugar bowl, but they also clean up the counters (#greencleaning).  I have left sticky glasses on the counter overnight and gotten up in the morning to find the residue all but gone thanks to a crew of tiny movers who are more than happy to recycle my trash (#sixleggedenvironmentalists).  Every now and then they'd get in the way of my food prep, and I'd have to wipe a hundred of them away to their doom, but for the most part we could live in a slightly imbalanced symbiotic coexistence.  Moths seem to exist only to reproduce in my kitchen, and they were doing it in my rice container  (#insectindecency, #getaroom).

The second reason is that sugar ants don't flap frantically around my face when I disturb them.  They just wander dazedly for a moment and then do their best to get back on track.  Moths go on the attack.  They go right for the eyes.  They bounce off my cheeks.  They get under my hair and run into my neck (#hitchcockremake?, #nightofthelivingflutterbugs).  It's kind of creepy.

But really, making rice for dinner and noticing that some of my rice kernels were a little longer and smoother and bumpier and had heads on one end (#itsalive) put me in place that I've never been before.  Finding moth larvae climbing around the edge of the tupperware where I keep my rice and finding some of the rice kernels strung together in tiny little moth cocoons was the last straw.  I later figured out that the moths were laying eggs in the 25 lb. bag of rice that I use to fill the tupperware [#buyingbulkisusuallyagoodthing], which is why the moths were sticking around so long and in such great numbers, but that didn't really affect my state of mind at the moment.  Tupperware works against ants.  My last defense had failed.  I went on definitive search and destroy (#psychowithaspatula).

I poured all the rice in the house into a big pan and stuck it in the oven at 200*.   And when the larvae started to climb out and try to escape even as they shriveled (#dantesinferno),  I shut the door on the squirming rice and grabbed a fly swatter.  I went Rambo style through the house, intentionally hunting down every moth, combing every inch of wall and ceiling space, slapping every one down with a vengeance maybe two or three at a time (#7withoneblow).

But the vengeance didn't last very long.  The reason I had left the oven was because the larvae looked so pathetic trying to escape their doom that I was scared I would have second thoughts and take them out  (#larvakiller). And moths, especially tiny ones, are just pathetic creatures.  They're kind of stupid.  I could slap one off the wall, and another one, literally three inches away, would not even move (#fliesrulemothsdrool).  And yes, the second one was alive because when I swatted it in its turn, it fluttered on the floor with one broken wing sticking up awkwardly from its body, shuddering helplessly and looking frantically for a direction of escape.  I had to remind myself to go in for the kill.

I know it sounds ridiculous, but I am having a spiritual conundrum over killing the insectine invaders of my house.  They are, after all, delicate living creatures with a certain beauty that has been splattered all over my walls (#mothpocalypse).  And so help me, when they look that pathetic, and I am raising my arm for the second swing, I sometimes question the state of my soul (#housekeeperfromhell?).  Why am I taking the presence of this creature so personally, and who am I to destroy it?  At the same time, as my fury begins to wane, it gets harder to kill each and every one of them.  I find myself wanting to spare maybe one out of the ten on the wall, which would be totally counterproductive.  I have had to push myself to swat that last moth instead of just declaring myself the victor and walking away, leaving just one among the carcasses of the dead.  All of which shows a depressing amount of wishy-washyness on my part (#needasnoopy).

In short, I've gotten tangled up in on of the minute crises that  come with being the lords of creation (#firstworldproblems).  Maintaining order has conflicted with life and beauty, and I've had to make decisions about what lives and what dies.   Honestly, I don't like this part of the job. Maybe I'm just not competitive enough, but I feel like a big bully, especially now that their numbers are waning.  After all, we brought them into the house with our search for free fruit (#knowyourbargains), and they were just doing what moths do.  They don't really deserve to die, but they can't be allowed to live (#speakerforthedead).

And I'll keep going as long as I have to.