This article first appeared in the December 2025 Edition of Birdwatching Magazine
Family myth has it that, when my mum was pregnant with me, a wasp went down the back of her dress and stung her seven times. Sadly, I can no longer fact-check this. However, I can say with certainty that, should a wasp secretly enter any room I’m in, I can detect it, as a shiver goes down my spine. Am I deluded, has the myth trained me, or was it my childhood experience of many wasp stings (we had a pear tree and it was my job to pick up the fallen fruit and suffer the wasps’ assaults). For much of my life, the presence of a wasp made me reach for the fly spray… in much the same way as my mum, when her lepidopteraphobia was triggered by a hapless micromoth.
When I weed my plant pots, I run my hand under the rims and cause an avalanche of snails… my habit has always been to crush the fall-out underfoot, minimising the petunia disappearances overnight from their predation.
I’ve been potting-up some plants that not yet ready to adorn said yard. They sit on my kitchen window sill and spawn tiny ‘fruit flies’, born of the organic compost. Hawkeye decimates them (forty seven today apparently). Arachnids also fear her extreme prejudice. (If only that Scorpion had left her big toe alone, she might now spare their kin).
Much of the world, if the internet is to be believed, worships felines, regardless of their nasty habit of killing anything within their power.
Our kneejerk response to ‘bad’ taxa is hard to counter. I’ve not been stung by anything for three decades… and the last culprit was a bumblebee that got stuck between me and my shirt collar. I love bumblebees and create habitat and hidey-holes for them. So, I now hold back from killing wasps, despite my base impulse, knowing they play an important role in our ecosystem, as do snails, and ants, spiders, slugs and flies.
If only slugs were furry and shunned seedlings; if only spiders made honey, perhaps our down on them would dissipate. The issue is our homocentric view. Critters that eat the food we grow, despoils our pretty flowers, raid our larders or just have the temerity to be scary or ugly in our presence, bring upon themselves the handy version of the worst of the chemical industry.
In the great scheme of things does our fly swatter deprive a Swift of a meal? Is Hawkeye’s slipper-crushed spider one less for an over-wintering Dartford Warbler? Of course not, but here’s the thing. The attitude we share is the issue. We put our species needs above all other taxa. Ostensibly, no difference to the vole-eating owl or fly-trapping spider… family first for survival. But, (cats aside my prejudice says) other taxa don’t wantonly kill other species because they’re ugly. Mammals flick tails and shudder flanks to stop the flies from tickling or laying potential parasitic bots.
Whatever happened to the attitude of our past, embodied in the old country rhyme: One for the rook, one for the crow, one to rot and one to grow! Now we encapsulate the seed in pesticide, spray the seedlings with herbicide and insect-proof the harvest with preservatives.
Every terminal act by humans upsets the balance; because we have over bred to the extent that we can only sustain our numbers by eliminating competition. We need to change our attitude to irritants and value all life, not just the cuddly critters!
I’m happy to be called a tree hugger, if hugging the trees stops the woodman’s axe.
