The face of evil

Ruthless, clear minded in my hatred. Surprised by my actions, as I think of myself, a being of gentler kind.
They must die, and die they do, by my own hand. Should I feel bad? I stop to consider it for a moment. Remembering the japanese beetles, and how I tried not to kill them last year ( visually I like them), and how they devoured the roses, leaving just shredded bits, massed a top them, fornicating. (each stem, held at its tip, not delicate blooms, but a hard ball of beetle backs.) Such a scene of gluttony. How it fueled my fury. And die they did. Smashing them with rocks at first, but it was too difficult, and time consuming, they would fly away or fall into the safety of dirt. I captured 10 in a plastic grocery bag, tied it closed, and jumped up in down on it, like a toddler in tantrum (and I was indeed having a tantrum). Finally we bought the lure bags, that you hang, they are lured into them, can't get out, and die in the sun, you tie it off when full, and throw them away. I preferred this. I didn't have to think about it. I didn't have to see them. And my pretty roses came back. So, no, there is no feeling bad, there is only defending the plants from voracious monsters.

But what about the voles? I don't want to kill them. I want them to just go away. I just nicked (about 30) morning glory seeds, and placed them in water, I shall plant them tomorrow, and the voles will eat all the seedlings before I even get to see one bloom, just like last year. I consider it a sacrficial offering, they can have this, as long as they leave my other plants alone. They make long winding trenches through the grass (both kind of cool, and rather irritating). Bob wants them to go away too, he talks of buying stuff to kill them, but he doesn't actually do it. Part of me wishes he would kill them, and just not tell me. I would wake up one day, and they would be gone, and I would just assume they found a place they liked better to live. I let the cat out one day last year (as he was watching the vole, and crying at the window), to get some good cat scent about, the vole kept darting about, the cat didn't however chase it, and when the (not too smart) vole would dart toward the cat, not realizing it was there, the cat would meow loudly (the way he always does, very chatty he is), and then the vole would go hide for a moment. Neither one seemed to grasp the whole, prey and predator thing, the way I had hoped. The cat was supposed to chase, the vole get away, but realize, this was not a good yard to live in. But each one had the attention span of about 5 seconds, so I stopped my experiment.