Wherefore art Thou Heaven?

This evening I was cleaning my apartment. In the collection of dirtiness I swept into a pile, arose one of those little rollie pollie bugs.

Those little guys don't hurt anything!

They just make themselves into little balls when they're scared. That's it! That's all the good Lord gave them in this world.

Instinctively repulsed by the prospect of my residence being inhabited by any form of buganoid vermin, I smashed the helpless li'l creature.

Then came the sweeping regret. Like a miniature title wave of petty heartbreak -- like a paper cut in that most annoying place.

I'm becoming one of those literal, "He wouldn't even hurt a fly" type of fellas. This is not a masculine trait. My desire to relentlessly offer the world the musk of manliness is surely defied by my emotional remorsefullness.

The thing is this... I don't know if there's a Heaven for that little rollie pollie. I don't know if the animal kingdom gets the privilege of an Afterlife. All I know is that I ended this little creature's existence. Sure, he's a tiny little nothing, but to him, his life was everything!

Sure, you can say I'm anthropomorphising the little buggard, but really, we are unable to know what life is like for a rollie pollie. Maybe it is something actually precious for them. They matter enough for God to create them, right? The Lord is pleased by His creation, is He not? So who am I to take the life of this little God-servant????

And now I recall StrongBad on homestarrunner.com, and his sickly sweet drawing, "Li'l Brudder". Sigh...