Brown 1 On the Pleasure of Having Mixed Feelings Bonnie Brown There was a spider crawling on the freshly-laid tile

in my laundry room and I smashed it. It was small and black, and making its way to my clean clothes, naturally with the intent to walk all over them and then surprise me by crawling on my hand when I grabbed a shirt. So I killed it to prevent a future heart attack: self-defense. There were forty flies buzzing around my newly-built house and the first appliance I bought was a fly swatter. My husband and I hunted flies for the next three days and triumphantly swatted them. One time I caught the fly in the swatter. I looked at the flys tiny body tucked into the crack, its now-crippled wings faintly flapping, and I handed it to my husband to finish off. Sometimes when the insects are still moving, but obviously injured, I give them another blow to put them out of their misery, in case the insect is suffering terribly. I am a compassionate killer. One time there was a fly on the fireplace and, having recently seen The Avengers, I decided to karate kick it. It must have been sleeping or sickly, because I killed it. But now Im just bragging. When William Hazlitt saw a spider crawling across his floor he let it go. He was known for being rather unpleasant and didnt keep many friends. But he let the spider live and I let it die. Actually, I killed it. Thats very different from letting it die. I am not writing my regrets about killing it either. I have never regretted killing a spider. Or a fly. Or any other insect that found its way into my home, or even too near the outside.

Brown 2 As I compare Hazlitts character to mine, and his affinity for sparing spiders to my insistence that if I see the bug in my home, it must die, I begin to wonder about myself. Maybe I should just stop comparing myself to others because those thoughts usually end in my feeling bad about myself or ashamed that I ever felt better than someone else, but I did compare myself to Hazlitt because we were in a similar situation and reacted differently. He let the spider wander away on its hairy little legs and mused on the act of killing and hating. I smashed the spider (with a fly-swatter, actually, which later broke from killing so many flies) and I too mused. I wondered if Hazlitts spider was bigger or smaller than mine, if he was in a room in his house or a hotel somewhere. I wondered how he could hate the sight of something but still have no ill will towards it. He at least could come away from that moment of letting the spider go feeling decent about himself. I came away feeling like a champion, Ill admit, until I started to think about Hazlitt. My mother read a draft of this essay and commented, I had no idea that I raised such a cold-hearted killer! She was joking, but it was kind of true, and I felt a little ashamed, yet I stand by my zero-tolerance for insects policy. My husband and I recently moved some new furniture into our house and about ten bees decided to come inside too. Surely insects must notice that they are flying from clear skies and no boundaries to confined walls and enemies armed with swatters. Even if their vision is poor, they must sense the change in the air, the darkness, or at least the feeling in the roomthe unmistakable tension diluting the air thats thick with hatred towards them. I even thought animals could sense feelings in people, yet at the times when I especially dont want to pet a cat they seem to flock to me as if I will give them all the love in the world. Ill pet it with one hand, taking careful note to not touch anything with that hand until its been washed. You might call it OCD, but I call it you dont know where that cat has been. Ive since decided that the cats

Brown 3 are just taunting me and I hate them more for it. But these bees flew right on in, heading directly to the windows out of my reachtaunting me. You might call it paranoia, but I call it conspiracy. My husband and I killed the ones that dared come down. Maybe it was a game to the little kamikaze bee and his friends, like how teenagers find a thrill in the game chicken. Maybe these bees were suicidal. Maybe these bees dont have feelings, but I superimpose feelings on bees anyway to make it more fun, and I still dont feel bad when I kill them. They will just be in a better place. Though they really came in from the better placeoutside my house. Suicidal bees. I once lived in Wisconsin as a missionary. I worked with another missionary, and one particular companion was one step away from being a PETA activist. On the PETA spectrum I am on the far low end for how much I love all living creatures not including humans. In this apartment, I would hunt down spiders and other insects and kill them. Once my companion found this out she would beg me to just take them outside, so we compromised: I pointed them out and she caught them and took them outside. While she was in the shower I would still just smash the bugs like I used to. I once confessed this to her and her response was, While youre in the shower I pick up the bugs and hide them in the corner. Maybe it was cruel of me to kill them when she couldnt see, but she was the same person who would chide my insect killing by reminding me of the commandment Thou shalt not kill, and other scriptural accounts on loving all creatures. I am sure it is a valid argument, but I also concluded that her obsession with all living creatures was subnormal and moved on. And I kept a close eye on the corners. I harbor the most hatred towards insects, I admit, but I dont particularly love animals in general. With animals, the boundaries get a little hazy: I will never kill an animal, which to me basically means not an insect, but I dont especially like them. Maybe I wont kill them

Brown 4 because they are bigger or because I wasnt raised in a hunting family. (Even if an insect is larger than a bottle cap, I usually wont kill itIll make someone else do it.) I dont want a pet of my own, but when I heard of a new rent-a-puppy business I wanted to go rent that puppy and hold it and scratch its ears for an hour. I still havent yet, but I know that if I did, I would probably wear clothes that I dont mind getting hairy or smelly, and I would definitely wash my hands (probably all the way up to my elbows) afterwards. Ive always known that Im a little vain, but that doesnt mean I like to face it. When I was in fifth grade, my friend Melissa had a pool. Sometimes they would pull back the cover and find frogs floating in it. There were a lot of frogs in our neighborhood. We played a game where we would throw rocks at the frogs to make them hop. We didnt aim well because we wanted to miss on purpose. We wanted to make them hop, not die. One day our neighbor Kyle joined us and saw us throwing the rocks at the little frogs, so he picked up a big rock and threw it. His aim was far more accurate; he probably thought we were trying to hit the frogs. He hit the frog and killed it. Murderer! we shouted, You killed the frog! I thought the point was to throw rocks at the frogs! he said. You arent supposed to hit it! He shrugged off our scolding and played it cool, but he probably felt guilty because he was willing to join us for funeral services not long after. We named the frog Bob and buried him in the dirt, probably covering him with the very rock that killed him. We made a tombstone of sticks and wrote his name in the dirt. Melissa said a few words and then I said a few words.

Brown 5 Kyle did not, as he was the murderer. We expressed our love for the frog we had just been throwing rocks at and went home. How do you explain the ability to throw rocks at a frog one minute and then sing a funeral hymn for it the next? Such is the teeter-totter I ride when I attempt to explain my feelings for all creatures minus humans. Some of my reasons for my dislike of animals are pretty simple: animals smell bad, animals get hair everywhere, animals are needy, animals cant talk back to me, and animals are just gross in the fact that they slobber and defecate and vomit hairballs. Whenever I bring this up people are quick to remind me that this description sounds a lot like a baby, aside from the gets hair everywhere and vomits hairballs. I want a baby though. My brother-in-law told me stories of diaper blowouts that covered the walls and kids vomiting on road trips, but I still want a baby, no matter how much waste it will splatter on the wall. In Wisconsin, I would go and meet people and teach them, often in their own homes. Only three weeks into my mission, I met a family of hoarders. They had enough animals to fill a pet store: at least five different kinds of birds and thirty kinds of fish were scattered in what would be the dining room. We ate in the living room instead. Three dogs were running wild, competing with each other over how many different human laps they could climb on in a minute, while I tentatively placed strings of spaghetti in my mouth. As the story goes (this family was a legend), the pet snake (something large like a python) got out of its cage and then they couldnt find it for months. It turned up alive; Im not too surprised that it found food to live off of in that place. I met families with the kinds of dogs and cats that loved to taunt me the ones who would flock to me, dying to rub their hair on my clothes, and their smell in my hair. I was with a missionary who loved animals, but I, the animal-hater, was the magnet for those smelly things. One family had an old cat. We were eating dinner and heard a hacking

Brown 6 noise. I looked down the right of the table in time to see the cat throw up. Then it wanted to come see me. I know I am not heartless; I am one of the more sensitive people in my family and I like country music. If I hear anything about a child getting hurt I want to cry. Recently two children were nearly kidnapped only five hundred feet from my home. A man pulled up in an RV and asked them if they wanted a ride. When they said no, he opened the door and grabbed one, but the kid wrestled out of his grip and they ran away. I dont have kids, but I slept a little closer to my husband that night. If I hear about animals, sometimes beloved, sometimes strangers, dying, I want to cry. Last night my rock-throwing partner in crime, Melissa, had a pet dog die. I knew this dog well because I went over there daily. I was there when they brought him home as a brand new puppy. I heard about their dad walking in the room and just finding the dog dead. Their dad sobbed. Their tough, sarcastic dad sobbed over a dog. I had enough of a heart to feel that. One time my sister was driving home and saw a dog crossing the street. She was happy that she had enough time to slow down and let him cross in front of her. As she passed the dog, she saw a car coming from the other direction, heard the squeal of the breaks, and the thud. She turned her car around and saw some people dragging the lifeless dog off the street. She pulled into a parking lot and cried. When I heard the story, I almost cried too. My family had a dog once. We sold him when we moved back to Germany. It was rare for us to have pets because we moved so often. His name was Dudley (Sir Dudley Dickens, named by my father) and he was a golden retriever. I woke up one Christmas morning to the sound of soft whining and a few barks. I went downstairs to find my parents and they showed me where the little puppy was hiding. I loved him immediately. That was one of the most

Brown 7 memorable Christmases for our family. As Dudley got bigger, he started to shed and smell bad. I would still play with him, but around age twelve the games turned into the keep the dog off my clothes type, which he probably confused for tag or dancing. (Then Id go wash my hands.) He mostly stayed outside, so luckily his hair wasnt all over the house. Oh vanity. I always thought there were two kinds of people: animal lovers and animal haters. But there must be animal obsessives, animal lovers, middle-grounders, sometimes-haters, and haters. I must be an animal sometimes-hater and an insect basically-always-hater (Id say always but I like butterflies and ladybugs because they are pretty oh vanity). For a few months, I lived with a family in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Like many in Wisconsin, they had pets: two cats, one dog, and way too many spiders in the basement, which is where I lived. I was in love with their beautiful college town, nestled on the coast of Lake Superior. But the day I found a spider on my bed was the day when I said, I wont be as sad when I have to go. If I didnt live in a basement, I probably would have liked it better there. But now that I am away, aside from the spiders, I miss that place and that family a lot. And I actually miss those cats and dog. I never knew animals could have such odd habits. One cat loved to eat my food, especially my cereal. After the first few times the cat jumped on the table and stealthily stuck its head in my milk, I learned to build a barricade out of cereal boxes and the milk carton, much like I did as a teenager when I didnt want to see or talk to anyone in the morning. This cat was tricky though. One time he knocked over one of my cereal boxes and in my attempts to put it back up he snuck in and got a slurp of milk. The other cat had a plastic fetish. Of course I didnt know this until I was organizing my binder and set some plastic page protectors on the table. Only a few minutes after setting them down, that darn cat was on the table rolling around in my plastic sheet covers. I laughed and

Brown 8 lifted the fat thing off the table. We repeated this pattern a few times until I decided I was not being productive anymore. Besides having little black cat hairs stuck to the static sheets, I actually didnt mind it too much. The dog was named Riley. That was the only one I ever learned the name for and remembered. He was a giant sheepdog, much like what you find on the movie Shaggy Dog. One day I was sitting on the couch and he came in front of me and sat on my feet. His owners said he likes to do that to people. I grew to love his company. When I would be in the sunroom reading or writing letters, I purposely left the door open so he would come in and sit with me. I later learned that he didnt do this because he liked me, but because his food and water dishes were in there and he was very protective of them. After my encounters with the cat, I can see why. One day I was sitting in the living room and I heard sirens not too far off. Then I heard Riley howling and realized he was matching the rise and fall of the pitch of the sirens. Thats talent. Once again, the owners informed me that this was just something he liked to do. So these animals were funny. I actually loved them. They had really odd quirks and I just happen to love odd quirks. I even took pictures with the dog and the food-stealing cat before I left. I probably would love them if they were pets of my own, but I dont know how much my obsession with cleanliness would take overoh cee dee. Setting aside all likes and dislikes, I definitely find animals fascinating. I once spent a whole summer watching episodes of Natures Deadliest. Each season covered a different area of the world and the deadliest animals there. It was mostly snakes and spiders, and I learned about the terrible things that happen to you when you get bitten. I also concluded that I dont want to live in the Australian outback. At the zoo I like to watch the snakes: so mysterious, so stealthy, so dangerous. If that glass werent between you and me, I bet you wouldnt be moving so

Brown 9 slow. I liked to watch documentaries, read, and watch animals, so animals are fine, for educational purposes (like dissecting in middle school science). Last week I was at a football game and a man was sitting behind me, loudly commenting on everything and screaming as if the players and refs could hear his instructions. (That is a whole other breed of animal that I will save for another essay.) That football game had a pretty boring third quarter, so maybe thats why I noticed the man behind me. I brought out my pen and notebook to write about the annoying guy and some thoughts on bees. I bent forward as far as I could, as though that would make me hear him less. I folded myself in half and reached in my purse for the candy I smuggled in, when I noticed a tiny spider crawling near my husbands foot. I almost asked him to move his foot to smash it, but then I stopped. I had been writing this essay, so preservation was on my mind. It is so small and harmless. It was smaller than an ant, but bigger than the little red spiders that have a fondness for picnic tables. I watched it run in circles, obviously lost in the new crowd. I took my pen in hand, and gently lowered it until the cap squished the spider into the cement. I felt a small pang in my stomach. Guilt? No. Just hunger.