I guess we’ve all (and by “all,” I guess I mean me, Sue, and Sunshine Jim) seen Barack Obama nailing that pesky fly during a teevee interview by now. Well, so has PETA, and they are not amused. Because they “support compassion even for the most curious, smallest and least sympathetic animals,” they’re sending the president a “Humane Bug Catcher.” Setting aside the whole “insects aren’t animals” argument, I can’t disagree with that.

I don’t especially like killing flies (except for deer flies and black flies, but they’re generally asking for it) or other insects (well, except for mosquitoes, of course – again, if they weren’t fucking with me, I’d leave them alone, too; it does say something about me – and most people, I guess – that I feel justified in killing, just because a creature is annoying me), and happily trap and release them whenever possible. It’s just that they don’t seem to understand my benevolent intentions, and they often refuse to fly out the door when I open it for them.

So I thought maybe this bug catcher thing would be cool. Something you could leave out for an hour, and then all the bugs in the house would be in there noshing on some bait, and patiently waiting for you to set them free to finish out whatever remains of their 20 day lifespan. Then I went and looked at the thing.

The Katcha Bug ^™ Humane Bug Catcher is basically a stick with a box on the end of it. The directions for use say,

Simply place Katcha Bug over the bug and slowly slide its plastic trapdoor shut.
[…]
You’ll have no problem catching even large spiders with this handy gadget. Katcha Bug measures 9 inches in length, so you won’t have to get too close for comfort.

Uh, OK. That might work for flies that are already dead (or are really stupid; I once rode in the back of a van that was infested with huge, slow, and really stupid flies from Buffalo to Cleveland to see a Dead concert. These flies would more or less let you pick them up and pet them – or step on them. I think they were doing mushrooms. Oh, wait, that was me), but the average fly doesn’t typically just sit there while you “simply place” a box over it.

If they did, I wouldn’t need an $8 box mounted on a 9″ stick. As for spiders, a shoebox with a piece of paper works quite nicely. Except, why would I want to evict a spider in the first place? They catch the goddamn flies and eat ’em so I don’t have to (catch them, that is; I only eat them while riding a bike with my mouth open).

I wonder if PETA disapproves of spiders, too?