Moth morals.

The miller moths that have been infesting our house for a month have mostly moved on to the mountains. Every few days a bunch of stragglers stop in, though.

To help deal with the moths, I'd bought a bug zapper. It is somewhat of a humane zapper. When a moth flies in and hits the grid, it doesn't make that satisfying ZAP sound. Usually it just stuns the moth, which then falls down to the bottom of the zapper, which is, I learned on the first morning, open. So after the first day I put the zapper on top of a large jar half full of water. The next morning there were about 20 moths in the water. I dumped the jar outside, and at least half of the moths flew away. That eased my conscience.

Yesterday, though, I began to think that probably some of the freed moths just reenter the house. I wasn't willing to drive them to the next county to release them, so I wondered if it would be okay to leave them in the water until they drowned. That is, after all, a relatively peaceful way to die, once you stop struggling. You don't actually inhale lungfuls of water, because when you eventually have to inhale, your throat constricts. You just suffocate, and possibly see mermaids in that long tunnel with the light at the end.

I was thinking about that last night and watching the moths around the zapper when I realized: those moths are really, really stupid. They bang and bang on the protective enclosure, trying to get through to that violet light, even though ten seconds before they saw their Uncle Fred get through, hit the grid, and get blown to smithereens. What are they thinking?

I made my decision, and I don't think I'm a bad person. I really do hope the moths get to see mermaids.