A bug's life
May 2025's challenge
The motivation for sharing some of my personal 30-day challenges came from an experiment I tried in May; for that month, I decided to fast from killing bugs. This wouldn’t have been much of a challenge during some points in my life, but living in a dilapidated house in North Carolina, insects were everywhere. What would it be like to respect their existence instead of squashing them?
When I started studying Gandhi in 2017, I learned a little about the Jain religion. It is very pro-life; they don’t eat onions or other root vegetables because pulling them from the earth causes harm to life. (I’m not clear if it’s the vegetables themselves, or the insect life in the soil.) This respect for insect life is so commanding that devout practitioners avoid going out at night if it might lead to stepping on a bug, and even wear masks to avoid accidentally inhaling them.
Killing mosquitos is self-defense, friends told me when I explained May’s challenge. It’s hard to argue with that logic; but I wasn’t dissuaded. (Perhaps counter productively, I also abstained from using bug spray for the month.) The challenge, it seemed, was to coexist with my numerous neighbors. When I was impaled by a mosquito, I tried to blow it away. In honesty, the mosquitos’ attacks resulted in several of their deaths during the month; instinct sometimes won out over my conscious goal.
Palmetto bugs came out at night. They dashed across the countertops, antenna flailing. I watched the roaches and let them go about their business. While I can’t say it was a pleasant experience to be outnumbered in the kitchen, it was easier to be mindful of them and accept it was a shared space.
One night, after the day’s construction had disturbed the wet wood under the sink, I saw a strange ant on the countertop. Rather than running along a path, it stationed itself in a small area about the size of a silver dollar. I watched it for a minute, then three, then five, trying to make sense of its behavior. Periodically, it would flail wildly, as though it were a sentry attacking some invisible invader. After a moment, it would calm itself and rotate a fraction of a circle. Soon enough, the pattern would begin again. Later, I was told this was a queen carpenter ant.
During the first days of June, with the challenge ended, I realized I would have to make a conscious decision to start killing again. As I wrestled with this, I felt inspired to write about my experiment. The urgency faded as I started swatting mosquitos again. Then it was only a short step—literally—to eliminating a roach running across the bathroom floor.
Overall, this was a good experiment, and maybe I’ll repeat it next year.
If you were a bug, what would you think of humans?