I have a spider that's been living in my sink for the last few days and I haven't moved him. I wash my hands in the kitchen sink and I haven't shaved. Soon I'll scoop him up in a cup and move him somewhere else but for now I hate to destroy his "home".

I usually leave them alone or move them but I think this is the first time I have rearranged my way of doing things for an extended period of time so as not to disturb them.

When I was learning how to ride a 2 wheeler bike (I forget how old I was . . .pretty young) I was going along at a merry pace, my dad behind me holding the bike up. I saw a worm in the middle of the sidewalk and SLAMMED on the breaks. My dad tripped over the bike and started yelling at me, asking why I felt the need to stop.

"I didn't want to hurt the worm."

Ahhhh. He was not amused. ^_^

--Christine

well I turned the hall into an aviary for the pheasant chicks, which meant no back door or cloakroom. And the mice took over the compost heap, they liked the carpet I had on top of it to keep it warm.
And I have a photo somewhere of three dogs and four cats on my sofa, and we just sat on the floor to watch tv. :)

we have an old chair that my cat just loves, we very rarely sit in it cause it's his spot. when he does lie on the couch instead sometimes one of us will sit in the chair (whichis really uncomfortable for us humans) or on the floor so as not to disturb him. mainly cause once you wake him up he demands attention.

when it's been raining i always watch where i walk so i don't step on any worms.

on my way home from work sometimes i pick up a sub for dinner. there are a lot of squirrels around our building so sometimes if i see one by the door i'll rip off a chunk of the bread and leave it for the squirrel.

at my mom's before i moved here i had a cat and a dog and a single sized bed. the cat hated the dog but loves sleeping on my bed so he'd lie across the foot of the bed and she's lie right up beside me away from the dog. so i'd have about 3 square feet for myself and i had to sleep curled up in a ball every night for 4 years
now i have a queen size and the cat isn't allowed in at night so boy do i stetch out! when my bf isn't there i manage to stretch across the entire bed

our area always has lots of ladybugs and ocassionally one gets into the apartment and flies into the lights. i turn off the lights so it calms down and then i pick it up and put it outside before the cat gets it.

but spiders and silverfish are fair game for the cat, i don't like them. spiders give me the heeby jeebies

I was over at my significant other's house yesterday and her cat brought in a mouse it had caught. We figured it was dead until bandit dropped it and the mouse ran off. Bandit freaked out and ran away from the mouse. I spend the afternoon helping catch the mouse with paper bags because we didn't wanna use poison or a traditional trap. Little bugger sure moved fast but we finally caught him and released him in a local park. Boy did we look dumb chasing that dumb mouse around. Especially since it eluded us for over 4 hours.

This thread pains my heart. In that one would suggest that to do something kind or courteous for a fellow creature would be "silly". Rather, to do harm or villany to such beings should instead be considered "silly".

When I lived in a townhouse my second story bedroom had no screen and the window was left open at all times. A mother mud dobber moved in and began constructing her nest in the upper crevice on the far side of the bedroom by the time I noticed she had already lain three children in the nest. She was directly over my bed and oft times confronted me in my own bedroom traveling to and from her nest with fresh mud. I did not consider leaving her alone "silly". I learned that come night the mother sleeps in the previous days birthing chamberand the lid to it is put in backwards in the chamber she is staying in that night. The most memorable part though was watching most the hatchings.

I most certainly did not consider this "silly".

I found a stray cat that had a bobbed tail and consequently had lost control of his bowels thus causing a large glob of feces to get stuck to his tail blocking his rectum. When I took my phone bill money for that month to pay pay the vet and when I rubbed antiseptic on his rectum for almost one month I did not ,nor shall I ever think, that it was "silly"

When a saw a squirrel cut down in the street and got out and picked him up ,with the possibility of getting a nasty bite, and rushed him to the vet only to have him die before he got there.

Or right now how I take time each day to put sunflower seeds and corn at the base of all twelve trees in my yard. In spite of my neighbors staring at me like a man gone out of his wit. So the squrrels will have an easier go of it in this snowy and cold winter.

I find nothing "silly" about any of these or any like deeds.

-Gem-

Well, I don't think any of this is silly but 99% of people would and that's why I chose that word. And yes, it is sad, but it's true.

Plus we all do nice things for animals but some things are just a bit off the wall and those were the things I wanted to hear about. Not things like "I volunteered at the animal shelter today" but things like "I chased a mouse around for four hours trying to catch it". I'm sure if you had seen it it probably would have looked silly. ;)

Well the example you used was one of not disturbing a spider after he had already built his home in your sink. This is not silly. However leaving him there may be silly ,as he is unlikely to catch any food in your sink and thus you would probably be doing him a service by transporting him to a place more food friendly as his homes sole purpose is the entrapment of food.

The post about the mouse was made when I was posting so I had not seen it ,but I still do not think that it was a "silly" thing to do even if you looked "silly" doing it.

A few years ago I went out for the day and left my bedroom window open a few inches. When I came home housemartins had built a mud nest on it. So it stayed open until the autumn when they emigrated to warmer climes. They had four babies, and had left a window into my bedroom, when they got used to me I 'd say goodnight to them and stroke their feathers in their nest, they slept head to tail in a row. One day one of them made a mistake and flew into the bedroom, I had to coax it out of another window, it left me souveniers.
Another time one of my cats sat staring fixedly at the wallpaper in the living room. I listened to the wall, and there was a bird inside it. Many brick houses in Britain have a 4" cavity between a brick inner and outer wall. Oh bugger I thought, and started to move a bookcase because there was a little air vent behind it That I hoped I could unscrew. The bird had squeezed into the wall from a hole in the attic, but it couldn't get out that way, I eventually managed to get it into the living room through the air vent, then out the window. It took four hours, but the bird was fine. That was a very good cat, she'd always tell me about anything I was missing. And she didn't catch birds herself.
I've had my share of mice brought indoors though. I find offering them a vacuum cleaner pipe to run into is the best way to take them outside, I can even poke it behind the fridge, and it bends into a U to keep the mouse safe until it is taken outside.

at work some of the plants people have sitting around are filled with gnats. They fly all around and such, i leave them be and just let them do their thing, while everyone else is out to kill them.

there use to be a spider that would always build a big web in my walkway, instead of tearing it down i would just crouch under it to pass by. It was a big ole ugly spider too. i think it got to cold for him.

well i have little sympathy for spiders, but ants on the other hand...
our apartment building always has ants, no matter how clean the apartment is. they travel from apartment to apartment and such so there's really no getting rid of them. they seem to like my computer desk the most, they craw all over the keyboard and back and forth in front of it searching for crumbs cause i often eat at the computer. rather than squish them i let them be. if one is in my way when i want to type i let it keep walking and wait for it to get out of the way.
and one night i was watching one trying to pick up a crumb that was too big for it to carry and i felt bad cause it was struggling, so i broke the crumb in half with my finger nail so he could pick it up. they're fun to watch when they carry things around. also it's funny when another ant tries to steal the crumb, they wave their front legs around as if they're yelling, it's kinda cute

I dont find these actions silly (noble perhaps), but most people seem to so... These are things I dont even hesitate about doing- but that people consider dumb.

I dont kill bugs- including mosquitos (why people seperate them from every other kind of bug I do not understand).

I ran out of science class with my worm that was going to be used for dissection and set it free. Everybody laughed- I wasnt trying to be funny. They dissected the worms while they were alive- I cried. What do you guys think about that?

I rescue bugs whenever I see that they are in threatning situations.

Whenever I see 'road kill' that isnt completely mangled and icky I move it off the road.


Bethy

when i see roadkill i always WANT to move it so other animals won't get hit while feeding off it, but i just can't bring myself to touch it :(

I don't think that showing compassion for another being is "silly" at all. Silly is dressing pets in stupid outfits, or getting upset over that bonzai kitten hoax. (It's usually animal welfarists who treat pets like toys, not ARAs.)

should we change the name of this thread to compassionate things you've done for animals? or maybe we can just stop complaining about the title and continue on with all the stories of compassion.

SuperBowl Sunday--Take some time to remember.

It takes 300 cows to provide enough footballs for one NFL season.

Originally posted by majake
should we change the name of this thread to compassionate things you've done for animals? or maybe we can just stop complaining about the title and continue on with all the stories of compassion.

i'm with majake, let's stop nitpicking over the title, it wasn't meant in the way you're all taking it.
and i'm silly for being upset about bonsai kittens. ok whatever. even if it's fake i imagine most of the people here are upset about the mentality it takes to invent something that horrible.

anyways.
i found a ladybug on my ceiling the other day and i was going to put him outside but i realized it's too cold for it to survive and that's what drove it in here. so i left it alone. but it probably has died somewhere of lack of food, so i'm not sure which is better.

"Mud dobber" is a little backwoods so Mud dobber-aka-wasp-aka-yellow jacket .

ah. that reminds me of something. a few things actually. my mom had a wasp nest on the outside of her window and she decided to leave it alone through summer, but come fall she couldn't close the window with it there so she had someone flick it off with a screwdriver but i think by then the nest was empty
anyway i knew someone in school who's dad has a wierd "thing" with bugs and with all animals really. he runs a family farm where he mostly raises horses for pleasure, but they do sell a few pigs and ducks for meat :( but anyway one day i was helping out with some farmwork and someone disturbed a blanket in the barn that happened to have a nest of yellowjackets in it. she got stung of course and the yellowjackets were mad as hell, nobody would go near the barn. so like usual when these things happen, we called her dad over, he walked up to the nest, picked it up, walked into the bushes and put it down, without receiving a single sting. he never gets stung by anything, it's so wierd.

I had this --bizzare-- experience once. I was walking to class with two of my friends, both of whom are omnivores. There had been some heavy rain, but now was sunny, so many worms were left lying on the sidewalk. One of my friends commented, "One of the things I don't like about rain is all the worms I have to avoid."

The other friend, the intelli-brain, shot back, "Avoid!? I aim for them!"

I spoke up. "How mean!"

He replied, "Well, I figure that they're going to die out here on the sidewalk anyway, so I may as well make it sooner than later."

I honestly didn't know what to say to that. If I had time, I would collect all of the worms and put them in my vegetable garden, but I don't. I'm an overstressed college student with 16 credit hours, two part time jobs, more friends than she knows what to do with, and family and church that would like some of me, too. It's a wonder that I found time and brain space to be vegan. :-)

Shalom,

Skylark

I was taught as a young kid to pick up worms and move them off the path. I was a teenager before I realised that other people don't bother. My mum wasn't a veggie(then) but was pretty enlightened for the 1950's.

In the summer time we get alot of bugs in our swimming pool and I always try to rescue them so they dont drown lol. I used to keep caterpillars for pets and give them losts of leaves to eat and they always made a cacoon on them or a stick.

Although it's not silly, I give my big dog a massage almost every night. And I sing lullabye's to the my little baby girl (dog). She loves me to hum to her as she's going to sleep. Has since she was a puppy.

I have a story to share. It happened only a few years ago. On Easter, my husband decided to do something special for me. We used to live in a small town that had a very small shopping mall. He took me up to the mall to see an Easter display that had a small pen containing live baby bunnies and chicks. I really enjoyed watching the adorable little animals, especially the chicks. As we watched them, we noticed that one of the chicks was smaller than the others, and was being terribly picked on and bullied. They continuously pecked at her back and tail, and she had a large, bloody sore on her back from the other chicks' constant abuse. We thought she must be the runt, and we felt terribly sorry for her. I suggested we go and see if anyone could move the chick to another area where she wouldn't be picked on. Even if we could convince someone to move the chick to the pen with the bunnies, it would be something--at least then she wouldn't be bullied anymore. We found the mall security guard, and he told us that we were wasting our time, and that he didn't even know who brought the animals to the mall. He said he had no intention of getting involved, and to just let the chick alone. We tried to find help elsewhere, going to the mall service desk to inquire if anyone would mind helping the chick. No one cared. There wasn't one person who even seemed to know who had brought the animals to the mall in the first place, and no one really wanted to bother with helping a chick. We went back to the pen, and the poor chick was lying on the ground, bleeding and panting. My husband was furious that no one wanted to help. He said, "If no one else will help this chick, then *we* will!" He stepped into the pen and scooped the wounded chick up, and started walking right out of the mall. We didn't even stop for a second.
We jumped into our car and took off. I held the chick in my lap and tried to clean some of the caked blood off her back. She didn't struggle at all, and seemed happy that she finally had some relief from being picked on. At first, we discussed keeping the chick ourselves, but my husband had a better idea. His boss at the time was married to a woman who was a manager at the Humane Society. We drove up to my husband's work with the chick in tow, and told his boss what had happened. His boss chuckled, amused that we had "stolen" a chick from the mall. But then he just grinned and said we were very caring people. He called his wife, who made plans to come and pick the chick up in the evening. She took our chick to the Humane Society to live with the other chickens there. We actually visited our little rescued chick every week, and we enjoyed holding and feeding her. She grew up to be a happy and plump chicken who enjoyed the company of people. She would jump up in my lap every time I came to see her. Even the Humane Society's big rooster liked her the best out of all the other hens. ;)
Sadly, one evening she was taken by a fox who got into the Humane Society's chicken pen. I was so sad to lose her, but I felt that she'd had a good and happy life.
Sorry for the long story, but I just had to share it. :)

Ms. Bunnicula,
That's a great story! Since no one cared what happened to the chick, it wouldn't have made any sense for them to stop you from taking it out of the mall. Congrats!