life

i just transferred an ant i found crawling on my monitor to a piece of paper, then to a leaf which i laid outside. we've never really talked about it, but my mom does not kill bugs. she says she tries not to kill anything at all. i guess that's her one way of adhering to buddhism. so i don't mind taking a few extra seconds to move an ant outside instead of smushing it. but if there were, say, a horde of them (is army the actual word for a group of ants?), i would probably squish them all rather than moving them all outside.

spiders i always kill. i can't stand the things. especially since one fell on my face while i was sleeping in my room at home a few weeks ago. does that make me a worst buddhist (not that i'm claiming to be one), that i'll move an ant and not a spider? what if i came back as a spider one day?