To kill, or not to kill ~ September 26, 2002

David Heiller

The bat flew through the cabin last week as only a bat can fly, dodging and darting like a furry whiffle ball,

Everybody screamed and yelled and cleared out of the room except my daughter Malika and me.

The question popped into my head: Do I kill this bat? I quickly answered no.

A bat, the kind that startles us,
and freaks so many of us out,
and eats multitudes of pesky insects.

I doubt that I will ever kill a bat again after reading an article about them in National Geographic a few years ago. The article talked about how bats consume astounding numbers of bugs.

Any critter that kills bugs gets a reprieve from me. (My compassion ends when it comes to killing bugs.)

First I took off my T-shirt and tried to trap the bat against a ceiling or wall. But he always seemed to flutter away at the last moment. And I thought they were blind. I had him trapped behind a picture frame once, and called Malika over to hold the frame while I slipped the shirt over him. But he came fluttering out, and did a little dance in my daughter’s face, which sent her diving to the floor, and the chase was on again.

I went to the lake and brought back two fishing nets. The bat evaded my fancy swooping several times, but I finally gathered him in. I took him outside. He squirmed around enough to get tangled up in the mesh, so I put on a pair of leather gloves and worked his fragile elbows through the mesh. He nibbled on my thumb several times. I couldn’t blame him for that.

Finally he was free. I held him up and gave him a toss, and he fluttered away. For a second he threatened to come in for one last dive bomb, but he wisely changed his mind.

We got home from the cabin three days later. I had set a live trap in the garden to catch a rabbit that has been eating the broccoli.

Crouched in the trap was a raccoon.

He was not at all happy to see me. He hissed as I walked up, then lunged at the side of the trap.

Raccoons: vandals and mischief makers.

Now this was more of a dilemma for me. I could see that the raccoon had walked in from the west. He had even knocked down some corn. So I was not happy about that.

But he was a wild animal. He had torn out the piece of metal that sprang the trap. He also had managed to pull in an extension cord that was under the trap and chewed it into small pieces. He had done his time in the cage. Maybe he was rehabilitated.

I could have dropped the trap into the pond, and the raccoon would have died a relatively painless death. But I didn’t. I put him in the back of the truck, drove several miles down a deserted road, and let him go.

I’m not sure why I did it. I told some friends about it the next day, and they both said, “He’ll be back.” If that is the case, he will not see my kinder, gentler side.

Skunks belong under the rubric:
not our furry friends.

These two critter incidents raise the question in the headline. When do you kill a wild animal?

Last year I wrote about killing a skunk that had taken up residence under the outhouse. A reader criticized me for not trapping and releasing it. But I would do it again. I’ve had too many dogs get sprayed by skunks, and I worry about rabies. So they are on my kill list.

About a month ago the dogs trapped a woodchuck under their house, and I had no trouble shooting it, because woodchucks are hard on a garden and I work too hard to have an animal ruin my garden.

Woodchucks are rural pains-in-the-neck.

I guess that’s where I draw the line. If an animal is a threat to me or my home, it usually dies.

But they aren’t exactly grizzly bears. Are they really a threat? That is indeed a relative term.

Everybody is different when it comes to killing animals. Some people don’t blink at the act. Others wouldn’t consider it at all.

There are no easy answers, but it does make living in the country an interesting experience.