Hatching Pains
I spent the winter of 2023 killing Spotted Lanternfly Eggs. Like most Americans, I got the memo of the most recent invasive species in our country. I saw the withered limbs of dogwood trees, black and ashy from the attack of the red insects. I grieved the dying magnolia that was slipping away from me, the tree that’s been in front of my house since before I was born. The ecosystem around my home was threatened by an alien species, and deep inside my primordial code, I felt the deep urge to protect what I loved.
I learned to embrace my inner predator.
As a youth, I considered myself a Jain. The extremity didn’t last long with the short attention span of adolescence, so I then considered myself a pacifist. I idolized the hippies of the 60s. I became a vegetarian. I picked up worms in the rain so they didn’t get stuck. I learned more about the global ecosystem and felt disgusted with the acts of humanity, its domination over itself and other species. With a god-complex so fervent, we almost didn’t notice it. I vowed to not give in to the destructive tendencies of homo sapiens. I would try my best to live in harmony with others, to be peaceful with others.
I was so naive.
I spent the winter killing Lanternfly Eggs, because I convinced myself I was saving the trees, saving my home. But in reality, I wanted an enemy I could focus on besides myself. I wanted a scapegoat for the destructive tendencies all organisms have. A rabbit kills a plant to gain its nutrients. A beaver clogs a stream to make a house. A person buys the latest phone that another slaved away to make. There is no way to live without stepping on something else.
So, who am I to have the final say of what the ecosystem should look like? While trying to run away from humanity’s ecological hubris, I found myself back in its arms.
Lanternflies are not evil. They are simply doing what it means to be alive. Find a mate. Find a home. Have babies. Live on. They don’t mean to kill the magnolias and dogwoods. They don’t think of them, much as we don’t think of the frog sthat die from our agricultural runoff, or the grub that disappears from its ancestral home. It lives without thinking of the death it brings.
I spent the winter killing lanternflies because I wanted to kill myself.
I had been in the psychiatric hospital that Fall after a mental breakdown. A combination of things that could be summed up into existential dread, growing pains. Much as I saw myself as evil, I projected that on these innocent creatures. Innocent as they follow their pure purposes. Beyond good and evil, they just are. I, myself, am just learning how to be, and they are already generations ahead of me.
This piece is dedicated to all the dormant Lanternfly eggs I murdered, trying to balance a force that is too beyond my comprehension. This piece is in return for your lives, for the magnolia tree in front of my house, for the shady maple by the creek. Your lives were not in vain, but my attempts to control you were.
My home will change. Its ecosystem will evolve no matter what I do. No matter what form it takes, whether I find it ugly or alien, it will be what it will be. I must accept my own metamorphosis, forgoing the fear of what I destroy, for I cannot live without the annihilation of something else. Whether that is a few hundred insect larvae, a tree to write a novel on, or my past self in order to evolve. I must look past the hatching pains, fear, and disgust, and look towards the excitement and beauty of what life has to offer.