Pet it, or Kill it?

When my kids were smaller, I was able to keep our home pet-free with the “I Can Only Handle One Pooping Creature At a Time” excuse. But once our littlest was, well, taking care of business all by her big self, that defense wouldn’t hold. So, several weeks ago, we welcomed little Coconut the hamster into our home. She’s the size of my palm and has bright beady eyes and soft fur. She seems to live to sleep, nibble on things, and run around her wittle hamster enclosure. And thanks to this ingenious, only-in-America, cage enhancement, the cleanup hasn’t been bad.

Prior to Coconut’s arrival, the last time I remember having a palm-sized, beady-eyed, fast-moving  furry creature in my house was December of 1989. I was packing my suitcases to emigrate to Ahmelleeka from the wilds of Melbourne, Australia. I was in the living room, mid-shirt-folding, when out of the corner of my eye, I spied… it. I shrieked in terror for my Mommy (or, er, Mummy, given my accent back then). Bless her heart, Mum recognized the unique timbre of my scream and came a-running, pink fuzzy slipper firmly in hand. Spying the furry creature, she proceeded to whack on it with the ferocity of a defensive mama, rapidly rendering what was once a three-dimensional creature, two-dimensional, in no time, um, flat.

Until, that is, she went to remove it from the carpet by upending a glass over it and sliding a piece of paper underneath. This is a pretty effective technique for removing slimy dead pests from your home without getting their slimy deadness on you. But it’s not so effective when what you presume is dead is only… mostly dead.

The minute the edge of the paper touched its seemingly expired body, the little pest resurrected itself. It literally went from flat back to furry in less than a second, and skittered at lightning speed to safety under the couch. Cue more screaming, now accompanied by jumping and arm flailing.

My mum raced to the kitchen, came back with a giant can of Napalm-derived bug spray, and proceeded to baptize the critter until it was undeniably and reliably dead. At least I think it was. By that point my Mum was too tired to pull back the couch to confirm its demise and removed the little so and so. She said she’d deal with it in the morning, and I never asked her because the next day I simply hopped on a pest-free airplane and left the country.

Problem solved.

Now at this point you’re probably thinking a variety of things, like:

1. Dang, that’s one tough mother.
2. Bug spray kills rodents? Who knew?
3. What kind of sick and twisted family slaughters cute, big-eyed, palm-sized furry wittle creatures by smashing them with slippers and then soaking them with noxious chemicals??? I am so unfriending you on Facebook.

To which I say in reply:

1. Oh, you have NO idea,
2. It doesn’t and,
3. Well, um, ours.  Call us sick and twisted all you want (and you’d be sooooo more right than you know), but, like most Australian families, we think that these furry little creatures don’t measure so high on the “cuteness worthy of living” scale:

CLICK.

You too? Yeah, thought so.

What made me say “AAAAAAAAAGGGHHH!!” instead of “awwwww” was a Brown Huntsman spider, and when I say it was palm-sized, I’m just referring to the size of its body. Each of its legs was the size and length of my finger.

Huntsman spiders aren’t common in America (praise be to God), but they are in Australia. The claim is that their bite won’t make you die, it’ll just hurt like you’ll want to, and also make you really, really sick. Which, in my book, merits the full pink slipper/death-inducing chemical treatment.

Every time.

I hadn’t remembered the Mum vs. Arachnid story in a while, but my friend Dan’s post today, and the ensuing lively dialog, refreshed my memory in a hurry. To wit, sometimes we treat sin like it’s a hamster, instead of a Huntsman spider. If we belong to Jesus, we ought not to be taking evil little creatures that can kill us, and give them the sequined carrier and velvet leash treatment.

They need to die.

He’s right.

But my other friend Terry raised an objection, of sorts. Namely, there’s not one person who’s truly capable of doing that.

And he’s right too.

Is this some kind of impossible-to-reconcile argument?

IMHLO*, I don’t think so. In fact, that seeming dichotomy is what the gospel is all about.

To be continued….

*In My Humble Layperson’s Opinion)

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