Dating : Don’t Kill the Roach — A Daddy Dilemma

July 12, 2019

My daughter-in-law screamed. The roach ran. My son responded. Before he could kill the offending “water bug” as those of us in the genteel South call the oversized cock roaches who can fly with a wing stand that puts a 747 to shame, my four year old grandson shrieked “Don’t kill it dad! We don’t kill things!” Aha, there it was. The all too familiar Daddy dilemma. It brought back memories of other occasions when I was the dad and my kids asked the tough questions that forced me to navigate the ethical world I preached and the practical world where I lived. I plan more posts about such experiences, but first, back to the roach.

My son has taught his two boys that all God’s creatures deserve to live. Ants and pill bugs which, in my day, were fair game, are off limits. “We don’t kill” is a family mantra. I get it. I have noticed that even the new cartoons don’t depict violence in the mode of Popeye and Brutus fisticuffs or anvils flattening the wile coyote at the direction of the smarter and faster road runner.

I have to admit most of the friends of my youth were guilty of inflicting pain and sometimes death on some of God’s creation during our formative years. Maybe it was boredom in the time before constant stimulation from video games and ipad media access. I mean, how does one spend the endless hours of summer with just yourself to occupy?

So, in the true Catholic confession mode, I admit I too am guilty of the occasional burning of an ant with a magnifying glass or the dropping of a caterpillar on an ant hill to see how the denizens dealt with the invader who became manna from the all power god — me! I have bent a pill bug backwards to see how far it can go before it, well, you get the picture. I have put salt on a slug as a “science experiment” to watch it bubble away.

I never pulled off a fly’s wings to my credit. And, my poor marksmanship with a BB gun saved many a bird from an untimely demise. No one told us not to do such things. The vast majority of us did not grow up to be sadist or serial killers. I will say three Our Fathers and four Hail Mary’s now in penance for my confessed sins. I am sure that is what Father MacCallum would require….at least it worked for the sins of disobeying my parents and saying a bad word…..the most frequent confessed sins of my youth.

I admire my son for instilling this love of all of God’s creatures in my grandsons. I remember a moment of transition in his life when, with his better marksmanship than his dad, he did succeed in bringing down a blue jay with a BB. The reality of the deed, the tears, I am sure has influenced this “rule” in the family ethics he has created for his family-something all parents do, consciously or unconsciously.

But there is the inevitable dilemma when aspiration hits reality. Some bugs deserve to die! There I said it. I put mosquitoes and ticks in this group. Ants often do too. I remember reading a story about a group of Buddhists monks who did not believe in killing anything, They were driven from their ashram by an invasion of stinging ants. I am sorry, but survival to me trumps in such circumstances. If I had been there I am afraid I would have found some poison and shown the ants they picked the wrong monk to mess with! Ha!

I remember an epic battle my brother and I had against ants who had invaded the one bathroom in our small house. Their nest was under the toilet and upon being disturbed by someone sitting to do their business, the ants would spring forth from their fortress to do battle. It was not only annoying, ant bites hurt. It was an indignity we, as a family, were not willing to tolerate!

Dad informed us he was going to the store to by some RAID — the nuclear weapon in the bug vs man war. My brother and I, he being 8 and me being 6, decided to take matters into our own hands, or I should say thumbs. We had become adept at smushing the ants with thumbs before they could bite. While dad was gone, we waged a war!

We banged on the linoleum floor. We let a sufficient number of ants appear then started smushing as fast as we could. At first their numbers were so prodigious they drove us almost to the door of the bathroom. Who knew so many soldiers resided so close to our privy? Undaunted, however, we managed eventually thumb by thumb, to work our way up to the opening of the nest. We banged again. A smaller group appeared….the rear guard (pun intended). Once again we defeated them.

By the time dad got home and banged on the floor with his can of RAID ready to show them who was boss, a scant two or three stragglers staggered out of the hole. Dad sprayed, but I know his heart was not in it. We had deprived him of the trill of victory. Whether the poison killed the remaining or they determined to move to more a more welcoming abode (like a Buddhist ashram) I don’t know. I do know our bathroom was free of ants and available for its intended, now peaceful, use.

Which brings me back to the roach. Roaches deserve to die, especially big ones. Lacking poison, my son was going to use the smushing technique that had worked so well for me and my brother in the battle of the bathroom so many years ago. Although, he would have to find a more suitable smushed than his thumbs. He started searching for his weapon. Alas, it was not to be. His son could not believe what was about to happen. Daddy couldn’t kill a bug. It was against the rules!

Bowing to his son’s admonitions about not killing, and much to his wife’s dismay, my son decided to try to catch the roach with a plastic cup — presumably to release to the wilds outside the door (where it would promptly return to the house by the same route it had used before I was sure.) It was an amusing spectical. The dance was short. The roach was fast. And, in the blink of an eye, the roach was gone, or at least not visible.

My grandson remarked with relief that he got away. The look on his mom’s face showed she was not pleased. My son’s exasperated expression evidenced he grasped the reality of disappointing his wife in the manly duty of defending the turf from invaders. Oh the purity of moral platitudes. How and when do you bend the universal truths you preach of the sanctity of life to accommodate the conflicting need to kill the invader? That discussion will have to wait for another day with my grandson. For now the roach lives.

How do I know the roach lives? I saw it this morning. In the bathtub. My son and his family have left. It is the last morning of vacation. I leave in a couple of hours to return to my city world from this lake cabin. I watched the roach for a long time. I am sure it sensed my presence. It was very still with only its long antennae twitching.

I faced my own “God of destiny” moment. Knowing I was leaving soon, should I kill it because, well, roaches should die? Or should I let it live to terrorize the guests who will be checking in as I am checking out today? What does the answer to that question say about the 65 year old me? And no one was there to watch, to judge. I could act in anonymity. I had complete power over the situation.

For a second I thought of the false compromise of catch and release. But I knew that he would just return. And, I doubted that, if my more dexterous son could not catch a roach, his clumsy dad would do any better. My past wanted to kill the roach as instinctively as one swats a fly with a fly swatter or claps to its death a pesky mosquito. Some bugs, like Earl from the Dixon Chic’s pop song, “gotta die!”

But then I heard the plea of my four year old grandson. “Don’t kill it, daddy. We don’t kill!’ And I didn’t.

Life is Good.