Killing Things

[Mr. DS]

Not looking for an admission to murdering a person here nor a celebration of animal blood on our hands. Rather wondering how many animals/insects you think you've off'd in the past.  It can be intentionally (hunting, fishing, traps, etc) or unintentionally (ex. hit said animal while driving).  

I've always been an outdoorsman at heart.  I don't hunt but I do fish a lot so I've off'd a lot of fish in the past.  I never really eat them but would give them to people who do.  I have no problem cleaning a fish and whatnot.  

I can't stand pests like mice and insects.  I've killed probably at least between 50 to 100 mice in a lifetime.  I use the good old fashioned spring trap.  

Car wise, I've hit a few squirrels, a muskrat and an unidentified something.  It was snowing out and I couldn't ID it.  

As said above I don't hunt but I'd like to try it someday.  I'd also learn how to butcher animals.  I say that to people and they often give me a sour milk face.  Of course these same people enjoy their chicken and burgers. I'm not a sadist rather just interested on where meat comes from before it hits your dinner plate.  

[indianasmith]

I used to love fishing and hunting when I was a boy, but I got bit by the Indian arrowhead bug when I was about 13 or so, and now I'd rather hunt for arrowheads than anything else.  I have no problem with hunting or fishing, I just don't have a lot of interest in it anymore.

[SPazzo]

I don't do that much hunting, but I am a big fan of fishing.  I would have absolutely no idea how many fish I've killed since I started fishing at age 3.

The other thing is that I live on a farm, and our livestock does include meat chickens.  I'm pretty sure I've done about 12-15 chickens in the last two years of living on the farm.  AND that includes pluckin' and cleanin' them.

[Ed, Ego and Superego]

I used to hunt, but I realized it was the shooting of guns and not the killing of things I enjoyed.
-Ed

[Flick James]

The number of bacteria I've killed through handwashing alone must be astronomical.

[Jack]

I used to go deer and squirrel hunting.  Never got a deer, just froze my a$$ off sitting in the woods at some ungodly hour of the morning.  Probably got 20 squirrels or so.  I used to skin them and clean them (Grandpa taught me how).  Shot a whole pile of birds.  Blackbirds mostly, though anything else that came within range was okay too.

Killed a whole pile of skunks.  Thirty or forty, maybe even fifty of them.  I grew up next door my my Grandparent's farm and the skunks would come down out of the hills because there was quite a bit of food around the barn.  In case anybody's wondering, yes - they do release all their stink after you shoot them.

Lately my nemesis are the moles that invade my yard.  I've probably gotten about ten of them over the last few years.  They really make a mess out of the grass.  

[retrorussell]

I've killed thousands upon thousands of bugs and spiders.  They are not invited into my household.  If I see any, it is my mission in life to end theirs.  Squish!

[Umaril The Unfeathered]

I've killed thousands upon thousands of bugs and spiders.  They are not invited into my household.  If I see any, it is my mission in life to end theirs.  Squish!

Then you'd probably love to hear about the big-ass Wolf Spider I killed when I was around 11.  There was a sleeping blanket I had in my closet for about a year, and apprently someone(thing) was sleeping in it.

I opened it up to air out out before a camping trip, and as the Good Lord is my witness, that thing was as big around a small Fiesta Ware coffee saucer!  The legs along had to be about 3 and a half inches long!

I yelled for my uncle, who turned around and saw it coming towards him, and he freaked out! He missed him twice with a shoe and at that point I took the other shoe and that was pretty much his last trip. 

Let me tell you, I haven't seen a spider that big since that day, and that was 36 years ago..and I don't wanna' see one that big ever again!

[claws]

I've killed countless insects because insects are grossss.

I accidentally killed my hamster when I was seven years old. Not with my own hands but he fell from the table which was my fault because I didn't look after him.

Other than that I never shot any animals or killed and gutted fish.

[Trevor]

I once hit a dog with my car, the poor thing went flying, landed hard, then got up and ran away. I was sick to my stomach for hours after that.  

[Mofo Rising]

I will kill any insect or rodent that ventures into my house. The ones I know about at least. I view it as a form of housekeeping. I respect their right to life outside of my home, but their life inside my house is incompatible with my own.

I'd feel bad about it if I didn't know how wildly successful those life forms are outside.

Then again, most of the insects that climb into my house are health hazards. When I first moved into my new house we had a terrible cockroach problem. The big two inch ones, too. I used to let spiders live, because I figured we had the same goal, the eradication of incoming bugs. Then I ended up with a bunch of black widows setting up shop in various unused corners, which is pretty dangerous.

Other than that, I haven't done to much killing of animals in my life. I've fished, and the way we took down salmon after pulling them out of the water was to bash their heads with a rock or stick. Not my favorite thing to do, but I was planning on eating them later.

I vivisected a live rabbit in a lab course on Animal Physiology, which led to one of my most unpleasant experiences. This story is a bit graphic, and involves cute bunnies, so read on with trepidation. The goal of the lab was to study the effect of injecting different hormones, such as adrenaline, and studying their effects on the rabbit. To do this, we had to open up the rabbits neck and chest cavity to insert tubes that would measure things such as blood pressure and heart rate. The rabbits were heavily sedated, so much so that they all reactions by the rabbit were negated.

Except that's not the way it worked for our rabbit. Keep in mind that I had never done anything like this before. So I cut open the skin and fur of the rabbit's neck. Then I had to slowly tear apart the muscles of the rabbit's neck to get to the jugular vein and carotid arteries, as well as the vagus nerves. I had to use tweezers to slowly rip the muscles away, because the pressure involved with the tweezers caused less bleeding than cutting with a scalpel. Anyway, as I'm there working at causing grievous damage to this rabbit's neck, which I had never done before, the rabbit's whole body sort of kicks. It then gave out this mewling cry that curled up into my soul and died.

I don't know if you'll ever find yourself in this situation, but it is unsettling.

We finished the lab, and the rabbit was eventually injected with a lethal cocktail. An unpleasant experience all around.

I'm not a farm boy, though. I have no qualms about eating animals, but I've never had the experience of raising them and then killing them.

I really don't like killing things (other than insects). I understand why we do it, and I continue to eat meat, but I don't put myself in situations where I'm the one to do it.

[RCMerchant]

Lotsa bugs...but not outside. I HATE fruitflys! Little basterds!
I usta hunt-shot some rabbits. Ate em too. Not in the last 20 years though.
Snapping turtles. If I was riding in my car, and spotted a big snapper crossing the road,Id grab my blacksmith tongs and grab his jaw-then pull his neck out and chop his head off. They are dam good eating. An old Russian farmer taught me to butcher and clean turtles-how to cook them proper too.
Fishing. Love to fish.
I wont kill it unless Im going to eat it.

Once when I was a wee kid,me and my brother Mike were out near the barn and a woodpecker was waay up in an old dead tree-just hammering away at it. Mike picked up a rock and threw it at the bird-and he hit it. It fell-dead. We felt so bad that we took him out to the cornfield and buried him. Put a small flatrock on his grave as a tombstone.