The Heron and the Otter Are My Friends...

I should have been a Tibetan monk or something.
Great statement to start out with, right? Well, I was just thinking about it yesterday when I did something that most people would be appalled at. I saved a spider. Yes, a SPIDER! I was at work, grooming a dog, when one of my coworkers came to my room and asked me to kill a huge spider that was next to the oxygen tank in the surgery room. I went in there to look at it. I'm not sure what kind of spider it is, but it was huge and I've seen that kind at work before...up close and personal, in fact, when one landed on my arm. As I've stated, it was HUGE, at least for spiders around here. It's legs spanning probably about as far as a soda can top or longer. He was just crouched in the corner, not moving. He was too cool to kill, though, in my opinion. I don't know why I think that. Because of his size and markings, I just couldn't kill him because he was so interesting. So I went into the kennel to grab a container. When I came back, my coworker--who, by the way, was peeking around the corner tentatively the entire time I studied the spider--saw the container and her eyes just about bugged out of her head. "You're saving it?!" she asked, incredulously. "Yep!" I replied as I scooped him into the lidded container. I then carried him outside and let him free out by one of the bushes.
I'm weird like that, I guess. I don't like killing things. I don't disagree with killing things. I have no qualms with hunters and the like. I just personally can't kill something. I don't even like watching the killing process, whether it be the hunting, or euthanasia, or meat processing plants (we had to watch a video of one in vet tech lab in college). I've watched my dad's hunting videos, and I'm okay with it, but I guess that's because normally they don't show the deer dying on camera. Normally, the hunter hits it and then it runs off into the forest and they find it later.
Another thing that brought this thought process up is the fact that I killed a baby bear the other day. Yes, I killed a baby bear. With my car. And yes, my car is fine. But I wasn't. I'm still not very thrilled when I think about it. But like Mike said, it's a wild animal. There's more out there. There's nothing wrong with it. If there's nothing wrong with it, why did I cry the entire way home after the fact?! I don't like killing squirrels or birds with my car. Not even possums, even if they are creepy little creatures. I don't even like killing snakes with my car. Heck, mom and dad will swerve to the other side of the road in order to run over a snake if they see it!
They've taken to getting me at work if there's something, whether it be a snake or a spider. One of the kennel kids was walking dogs last summer when she came in and said there was a huge black snake out on the walkway. Nobody would go outside, but I went. I grabbed a push broom and went out there. It was a big black snake, probably about four feet long. I just stomped at him and used the broom to gently push him away. The animal hospital is up against some woods, so I scared him off in that direction. He's a black snake. He wouldn't have hurt me unless he felt really threatened. Me stomping and pushing him more scared him or even just annoyed him than threatened him.
On a final note of this bizarre confession...I have a praying mantis outside my window at work. There's one there every year. It's obviously a different one, as this year it's smaller than the last couple years. Praying mantises are supposed to be some sort of good luck or good omen or blessing or something, aren't they? Or maybe they just know I have a good heart...