Me: I had a really hard time today when I was out in the yard weeding.
John: Why?
Me: Because as I was weeding I was disrupting and destroying the habitat for the snails that live in our flower beds. It just made me think about this book I once read, Modernity and the Holocaust. The author compared the ideology behind the holocaust to a garden - as if the Nazi's were trying to garden humanity by planting the good and discarding the bad. And what was "good" and what was "bad" was completely relative. Anyway, ever since reading that book, I have a hard time with gardens. As I was weeding today and uprooting the homes of those snails, I just kept thinking, "What right do I have to destroy their habitat? This is their home too. What authority do I have to decide what stays and what goes in our yard?"
John: Okay, but Alyse, what you don't know is that before you ever started weeding, I went out and talked to the snails. I told them, "Hey guys, we just bought this property if you want to stay you're going have to pay rent or else you're going to die. They never paid rent. They broke their end of the bargain, Alyse. Deals off... So you should be good.
