Roaches ....

[Diana]

Were you ever a person who would freak out at this type of occurrence? How did you change, or was it more of a subconscious transition?

I never liked killing anything, but some insects used to scare me such as spiders. I actually don't have a memory of ever even killing spiders, though. I have one horrid memory of "fly strips" my mother used to use when I was little. They were something like a roll of sticky film that you unwind and hang on something. I can still hear the flies stuck to it dying. So I guess I have always been like this.

Once you get past the conditioned fright and repulsion (and that is not to say that one discards common sense when it comes to poisonous creatures such as black widows and rattlesnakes) you are able to see other things about creatures. I have gotten more and more used to wild creatures over the years and the more used to them I become, the more beauty I see in them. When I get a scorpion in a glass, I am able to safely look at it. They are amazingly beautifully designed. I came across a huge scorpion once in my front yard and it must have been ancient. I have a pic somewhere because I went in the house and got a ruler, put it next to it and photographed it—it was almost 6 inches long. The crazy thing is that it had somehow learned to chirp like a cricket (it's main food). It didn't sound exactly like a cricket but it was very close. It was incredible to witness that. 

We do get rattlesnakes here as well in the desert in the summer. They are territorial, so it makes no sense to kill them, really, as another will move in. So if there is one near, there will likely only be that one. And they tend to hang out in the same small areas. At night they curl up somewhere and if you know where, you just don't go near it. During the day, they can't be in the sun and sleep somewhere so you just have to be careful. I had the same one in my yard for a number of years I named Severus, and he (who was probably a she ) always came back to the same spots.

Over the years I developed ways to get the creatures out of the house. For example, I can use a plastic grocery bag to catch flies with. If you are patient and move slowly, you can slowly lower the open bag over the fly and if you can get it down far enough, the fly will fly up into the bag, you can wad it up loosely, and take it outside. I have wanted to invent a fly-catcher for years that would be easy to use.

Anyway, it's worth moving toward more integration with the natural world, and desensitizing from the visceral reactions and conditioned fears associated with insects and snakes etc. while, of course, keeping common sense in place.

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Here is a thread discussing giving money to the homeless:

https://www.bring4th.org/forums/showthre...t=homeless