Pest Control

For three days now I walk the garden at periodic intervals. In one hand I hold a thirty two ounce former yogurt container, refilled with water and a splash of dish soap, foamed up into about an inch of thick white suds at the top. In the other hand I hold a stick longer than my forearm and smaller around than my littlest finger. I circle the front and back gardens peering at leaves, buds, flowers, looking for Japanese beetles. The black-legged and shining copper-green interlopers arrived earlier this week. I took a day or two before I worked up the energy to undertake their extermination.

I define my loop around the garden by the evening primrose. They open at night, hence the name, a bright yellow flower that reflects so much light that under a bright moon they seem to glow. The beetles love to eat their triangular green leaves. Later in the season they will turn to the rose mallow. Presently the mallow consists only of smooth stems and large maple-ish leaves but soon they will dangle fleshy green buds the size of my thumb, from which will slide pink tips looking - I apologize - like the end of a semi-tumescent dog’s penis - and which later pop into fist-sized fragrant white and pink flowers with dark red centers. The mallow attract hummingbirds, the sight of which invariably sends a jolt of surprise and delight through my brain: “oh!” I say nearly every time. The beetles crawl into the green buds and eat the flowers before they bloom. They eat the raspberries as well, placing them in direct competition with the happiness of family, whom I may well regularly fail but whose days I can always improve by bringing in fresh berries.

I regularly see one beetle lie face down on a leaf, seeming to continue eating while another climbs onto its back. I hold the yogurt container under them and brush them with the stick so they fall in. Like bargain lovers and drinkers I take pleasure in the two for one. Making them die mid-mating is extra satisfying as I have removed both these two individuals as well as preventing more from being hatched in the future. This kill was time especially well spent.

Once fallen from leaf to container the former lovers lie on their backs, their segmented underbellies exposed, limbs splayed like starfish, suspended in the foam. It looks soft and peaceful, white cotton or fluffy snow. The phrase “it’s just like going to sleep” crosses my mind once in a while as I do this work, but of course it’s really more like drowning. Twice today beetles clung to the end of the stick. I tried to shake them off back into the container but they held on tight. I left the stick in the soapy water for about five seconds the pulled it out, beetle-less, sudsy, clean, and continued exterminating.

I count them sometimes, though I regularly lose track. Five or ten on this morning’s cull, then after dinner I stepped out to return a friend’s call - he didn’t pick up, he’s moving away this weekend, we exchanged calls to see about getting together before he departs - and I noticed many more beetles. The evening cull tallied at least thirty. I count them because, and I suspect this is misguided on my part, the numbers provide a sense of progress and accomplishment. I may have squandered much of the day, but I killed around 40 pests, protected the family garden, facilitated future plant growth.

Tonight my seven year old followed me for a few minutes. I pointed out the evening primrose, showed the folds in the buds where the beetles often hide, narrated my technique as I swept more beetles to a watery end. She remembered a day last year when two dead beetles floated at the top of the container of water and a live one clung to them trying not to sink, laughing as she recounted the memory, and yet she told each beetle “sorry about this!” as I knocked it into the suds.

I do at some level believe all beings value their lives and suffer as the end of their life closes in, which means I experience myself as committing a wrong with each death, but I also believe the beetles lives, and so also their deaths, are inconsequential. I periodically find myself wondering if the beetles have any kind of primitive consciousness, then push the thought out of my mind, focusing instead on the trick of it, the technique and skill involved in using two fingers on the same hand that is holding the container to bend the primrose bud so the beetle dangles over the water then with the stick in my other hand flick so it falls into soft, white death. It’s a kind of game of skill that brings a pleasant feeling of focus, the sort of close attention that provides the relief of absence of other thoughts, a pristine concentrating mind. To have what I want lesser beings must suffer, and I find that, on balance and with practice, it is not hard to live with dealing death.