Things I Struggle With All the Time

All Creatures Great and Small – Unless They Taste Good?

I have a hard time killing anything. Even bugs –  I do! I’m not the type to run screaming from a spider* or anything (tho’ I will back the fuck up from bees/wasps/yellowjackets – those scare the pants off me), but in general, I really don’t like to kill them. I do my best to catch them and get them outside. For reals. I suffer moral dilemmas over gnats.

The long and short of it is, I really dig animals. Every close encounter with a deer or a garter snake I’ve had has been exciting. The winter a mourning dove nested in my windowsill and hatched her chicks despite the snow, I felt trusted and honored. When I’m out and about, I look for chipmunks in flower beds. Neighbourhood cats gravitate toward me. We have skunks, opossums, squirrels, raccoons, and all kinds of birds in the area around our house, and we have feeders up around the house with the windchimes. I have a family of squirrels that live in one of the maples by our house who jump down to our balcony to take peanuts from my hand. We put out vegetable scraps for the bigger critters.