Darwinism and Pesticide

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Once upon a time, a lovely old man named Charles Darwin brought forth the idea of the 'survival of the fittest'. We thought it fantastic for years, we applied it to our modes of thought and modes of action, yet as of late, I feel that it is eliminated because we are cheating. 

We are mistreating some animals, indeed. We are sending millions of animals to slaughterhouses a day in order to keep our iron levels up, indeed. We are putting live animals in little contraption hanging off keychains to sell - well, at least the Chinese are - indeed, however there is one thing above all that I am referring to, and that is we are not giving pests a chance.

I just killed off an insect that was drowning in the soap area on my bathroom sink. It was floating there, its wings caught in a bubble. I looked at it and all I could see, from the accumulated fear built up inside of me, was a puddle of brown around it. It was not really there, though my immediate reaction was to get rid of the bug and the puddle of water it was in. So I flooded it out, sending it to its death faster.

And I felt horrible. I felt a sense of relief from being far away from that insect, however I began to reflect on all of the insects and bugs whose deaths I am responsible for, and I felt rather awful. Are insects not animals? Do they not deserve rights as well? 

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Most of the insects we kill are utterly harmless to us. If anything, they are only responsible for our temporary adrenaline rushes. I have seen some people handle tarantulas like they are pancakes and I have seen people who scream at the sight of a little ball of fluff mistaking it for a spider. I think the difference is how family members react to insects while these people are young. If I was raised to not mind spiders I would have a pet snake instead of a pet bird. 

It is interesting to see what animals we consider 'pests'. I wonder what Charles Darwin would have thought of this.

Humans Caught in Dishwashers

It is not every day that I, or any other person, for that matter, come across a human stuck in a dishwasher. In fact, the very sight of it is quite staggering. Today I found not just any human, but a particular human, my mother, fallen into the dishwasher, struggling to regain her balance.

It happened in a peculiar set of events, though the events contained were fairly normal to my household. After hours of his squawking and screaming and screeching and nagging, I decided to tend to my parrot's needs, and release him from his vast aviary which implies no entrapment compared to smaller aviaries, and place my shoulder at the entrance so as to provide a ladder to my otherwise difficult to climb body. Surely enough, he climbed up, and within seconds, was content. 

I, along with my parrot now seated on my shoulder, headed over from the backyard to the shop, to the ice-cream freezers where my father was re-stocking the Drumstick ice-creams. My parrot and I conversed with him for a while, watching him as he swiftly replaced the sold Drumsticks, and closed the freezer. I soon realised that the conversation had to come to an end, and decided to take my parrot on the fifth tour of the house today. I expected him to behave as he always had, however expectations are not always met.

Listening to his pleasant chirps, I had not anticipated what was to come next, nor did my poor mother who has a proliferating phobia of all animals, great or small, which has clung to her since childhood, instead of dwindling away like her hatred of food. She stood there, back faced to the entrance to my home which is connected to the shop, washing the dishes, unbeknownst of what was to cling to her back. As swift as a large butterfly, my parrot suddenly took flight like one of the first aeroplanes whose flight was anticipated but not quite expected, and landed right in the middle of her back.

Mid-flight, I screamed, warning my mother "look out, Dory's coming!" Just before my parrot landed on her back, she yawped in fear and the second she felt her shirt get a millimetre tighter from the strong grasp of my parrot, she fell backwards, straight into the dishwasher. Had he been awkwardly perched a little lower on her back, I would have been reporting on a rather morose story.

Her hands, covered in bright magenta coloured gloves covered with soap waved in the air after slipping from the kitchen bench, providing no assistance in the fall - my instincts immediately cried, get Dory away from there! And that, I did. I hurried him back to his cage, where he sat for the rest of the evening, singing in a quiet voice so as to not be bothersome.

Now, my mother hates animals even more, and I will not be surprised if I find my parrot fifty grams lighter tomorrow. It is not every day one comes across their mother caught in a dishwasher, with a parrot clinging for its life on her back. 

Pets in the City

If you have a pet, you have a child. You have a baby child that is unable to converse with you - though it may appear so at times when dogs moan something that sounds like 'I love you' or when birds repeat things - and that baby child needs you, its mother, every single day. It's probably because you, fellow human, tore it away from its own mother. Unless of course you adopted it. Regardless, I believe pets require more blood, sweat and tears than tiny humans.

Take, for example, my parrot, Dorian. I have had him for almost two years now. I was gifted him on my twenty-first birthday, when he was a savage little black-beaked bag of feathers - now, he remains savage, but has grown both in size, strength and intellect. At the time, we thought him to be a female, so we named him Dora after Dora the Explorer, because he simply loved to explore foreign regions which weren't his cage: the kitchen, the curtains, the curtain stand, the top of the fridge, the back of the fridge, under the fridge, the three bathroom mirrors, the bedroom mirrors, everywhere. That was until we had to pluck some feathers near his butt which were over four centimetres long, and send them off to the DNA lab. Thus, Dory was made. And now he is Dorian because Dory is too cute of a name to use when you are telling off a psychopathic critter with Houdini-level sneaking skills.

As I type this, he is imitating a bat's call to acquire my attention, because he senses my presence in the study, the room near his aviary. This certain bat passes over our home each night, and my child has captured and mastered its call, and repeats it with an agitated squawk at the end of it to imply how serious he is about being angry with me for leaving him alone for too long - two minutes too long, most of the time. I have less time to myself now, not because I have a boyfriend, not because I have a job, not because I need to clean the house, but because I have a pet. A domesticated pet, which is the subject of which I have reaped. I have sowed wanting a pet parrot, and now, I reap. But it isn't all too bad, I suppose.

Pets bring positivity into human life. They can offer elderly, adolescent and pre-pubescent companionship. They fill in peoples lives when their lives have gaping holes of freedom and isolation, and thanks for our creation of smartphones, they mostly are the reasons as to why most social media has gained popularity. They teach humans responsibility. Going to the supermarket? Do not, and I repeat, do not forget to buy your cat Tabitha her can of Fish and Chicken cat food. Otherwise, you will wake up with strange claw marks all over your body. Having a nice big juicy roast for dinner while your dog Rufus has to eat last night's leftovers? Do not worry, he'll be on your lap in no time. Just make sure you give him 60% of your roast if you wish to live.

On another positive note, if you do not have anybody to come home to, it would pay off to have a needy pet cat who prefers your undying constant affection so long as you constantly stroke its soft spots and satisfy it enough to make it purr loudly and ruthlessly claw at your sensitive thighs. It will welcome you home with loud meows and affectionate leg rubs, leaving you to clean off its clinging fur from your  only washed pair of black work pants that you have to wear tomorrow and the day after until the weekend.

Pets are needy. Pets require a lot of attention and love and time and food and exercise and showers and shampoo and their food and yours. Pets will ruin your shoes. Pets will ruin your curtains. Pets will fornicate with your plush toys and legs. Pets will deploy faeces in the corners of your house that you forget to clean that very moment before your in-laws come over for dinner. But most importantly, pets will shine an everlasting gleam in your heart which slices through the dismay and loneliness that occupies it.