This is the time of year when human beings declare war on the insects of the world. Hungry ants, waking up from hibernation, are on their search for food as they emerge from their winter nests. People spot them in their kitchens or pantries and immediately seek to kill them. Wasps and bees also return to the air to complete their life cycles, but are gunned down by poisonous sprays. Pollinators awaken, seeking out the first blooms from which they can find food, which is often dandelions, but we poison these cheerful yellow heralds of spring, or mow them down, depleting the insects’ food source. This in turn depletes that of those who prey on them, such as spiders. Birds that rely on insects for protein, and to feed their hatchlings, are often hard pressed to find them.
I watch my neighbors cleaning up their yards, their lawns receiving their first cuts of the season, to reveal the water hogging green shoots. TV ads, direct mail, and store displays begin their hard core marketing to sell the myriad of poisonous chemicals with which they can saturate their yards and homes. Articles begin to appear in the news about disease carrying mosquitoes and ticks, planting the seed of fear in those who are susceptible to that kind of propaganda, but the insects are not to blame. People blame them for the diseases that they themselves have created, from their own belief in disease.
There are no good insects, nor bad ones. There are those that depend on flowers and many of the flowers depend on them. There are predators and prey that, until humans interfered, managed to maintain balance among their populations. Every insect has a purpose for its existence. When we kill them, we are essentially killing all of the others that are higher up on the food chain, such as bats, that eat mosquitoes. We can continue to participate in this yearly genocide of insects, or we can change our minds about them. Insects are not to blame. It is human beings that are to blame. If we do not change, we will destroy all life as we have known it.
