Wee Wisdom: Keeping the Moose off my Roof

Sophia saw a bug sitting on a post and swatted at it with her book. “I’m going to kill that guy,” said my 7-year-old.

Ella was not happy with her younger sister. “Sophia!” she yelled. “You can’t just kill anything you want. Now that bug won’t be able to reproduce, and animals that feed on it won’t have enough food, then they’ll die, then nature will be out of balance and moose will stampede over our house! Do you want moose running over our house?”

I had to laugh. Not because the prospect of a thousand-pound vegetarian in my living room was particularly funny, but because of the point my fifth-grader was making. She managed to connect the seemingly trivial notion of killing one bug with a reversal of the natural order, and she made the theory actually seem plausible, like the sci-fi plot in a Michael Crichton novel.

Despite the questionable scale of Ella’s “action-reaction” comment, it’s not unreasonable to posit that everything we do is connected in some way. All living things share the Earth. If one person can be responsible for tipping the balance, does that amount to a frightening responsibility — or an exhilarating opportunity?

Full disclosure: Tanya and I have an electric bug zapper, and we’re not afraid to use it. But maybe, as Ella intimated, killing one fly is symbolic of a greater issue. Should we back off?

As individuals, we are free to make our own choices, yet none of us can exist alone. All of our actions depend on and affect others, even people we’ve never met. A worthwhile connection can happen instantly — helping an old lady cross the street, for instance — or over time, like with recycling. Actions clearly elicit reactions, and this goes on and on perpetually, gradually rolling forward like waves in the vast ocean. The ripples will endure until the universe is no more.

Sometimes the consequences of our actions happen remotely in time, distance or measure. That’s when things get tricky. Unfortunately, we are often too short sighted to appreciate the results of what we’ve done. This can lead to trouble, like Ella’s threat of antlered beasts roving through suburbia. Part of the problem is that instead of accepting that we are each threads of the same garment, we try to prove (incorrectly) that we come from different clothes altogether. It won’t work.

And so, the debates rage on about how to tame our unruly national debt and figure out how to pay our bills, and over who’s at fault when the government of the most powerful country in the world shuts down for 16 days. Our elected leaders can’t grasp that we — every last one of us — are both the cause and the solution. The sooner we realize that, the quicker we can get back to picking each other up, instead of knocking each other down.

Or helping me keep that darned moose off my roof.