When the world slows down every evening and our neighborhood goes to bed, our porch light starts burning the midnight oil, a lone beacon in a blissfully dark and quiet rural scene. Running our company involves a lot of night work, and my husband and I have become students of the nighttime planet that so many people never see.

The crickets start their evensong, the local mockingbird strikes up his one-man-band, the frogs join in with their incomparably lovely serenade. Mysterious fruit bats share the star-bright skies with regal white and gold owls. Raccoons, possums and skunks rustle in the dim growth of fragrant mint plants along our easement. There are so many sounds to listen to, so many sights to glimpse on a warm summer night in the absence of man and his machines.

Best of all, we like to step outside onto our patio in this seemingly-alternate universe. Because ours is the only porch light burning in the wee hours, our home is the place to be for the fascinating and wonderful nocturnal creatures. They come to bask in the lamp rays - the curious and otherworldly beetles, the huge mosquito hawks, and the majestic moths in their coats of palest green, snow white, gold, silver and bronze.

Children respond with spontaneous joy to vivid butterflies, but I have always had a special love of the night moths since my father first showed one to me when I was a baby. Some are as wooly-soft as baby rabbits, others as gorgeously-patterned as an Art Nouveau graphic design. The antennae of many of them look exactly like miniature ferns. Subtler than the butterflies, North America’s night moths have always felt to me like a whisper, a special secret, a treasure that requires moonlight to discover.

And so, it has been with an especial feeling of sorrow that I have contemplated the California Department of Agriculture’s assault on my moth friends. Their vilification of the Light Brown Apple Moth is being used as their excuse for filling the night skies with deafening, ugly machines spewing poisons that will fall on the bats, the owls, the sleeping birds in their nests, the raccoons washing their suppers in the creeks, human families and every species of moth that lives in our state.

I hear the pesticide people, the official Ag. agents, the conventional farmers and others talking about pests, and the quietest part of my soul turns away from this unearthly mindset. What right has any man to call a natural creature a pest because it is simply eating? How is nibbling a tiny hole in a leaf somewhere on planet Earth grounds for execution? Where did we lose our understanding that we inhabit a diverse world, where there is food for all species and a reason for the existence of every creature that exists?

Professional bug men will explain to you that moths are ‘beneficial’ insects. I appreciate this as a nicer description, but again, turn away from a belief set that only sees value in creatures insofar as they serve mankind in some way. It is true, of course - moths are crucial pollinators, and the part they play in the web of life ensures that the wildflowers return to the fields every year, that there are fruits and vegetables for all of us to eat. We owe moths our thanks, just as we do honeybees, birds and other hard-working species. But, for me, the question should never be about ‘pests’ and ‘beneficials’.

Each of us appears on this earth but for a short time, and this is proof of our right to be here, to eat and drink, to live out our days, whether we benefit others or keep to ourselves. For me, the fact of existence means an inalienable right to exist.

Who are these crazy men who have taken to themselves the right to create lists of species, determining which may live and which will die? It is revolting to me, as an inhabitant of this planet, to realize that jobs, official titles, whole agencies exist based on this idea that men can decide who gets to live here. It’s so inappropriate. It’s not our job to decide this.

But what do you do when there are bug holes in your lettuce or a blemish on your apple skin? Do you deal out death and judgment on the innocent creatures who, after all, were only hungry? Or, do you cut off the nibbled spot, thank Heaven that this is a planet of abundant food and do what the moths do - have something to eat?

Can you picture anything greedier than conventional farmers covering countless miles of land with their food crops, declaring, this is mine and anything that comes here for a meal will instantly be killed? When the earth is covered with this is mine, where may the animals and insects eat? How can being hungry have become a crime?

My first essay on the destruction of California in the absurd pursuit of the little light brown apple moth contained a statement I have not seen published elsewhere in this situation. The statement was this: it is immoral to kill the light brown apple moth. It is evil for men to take it upon themselves to destroy the incredibly ancient mating patterns of insects which, on a scale of global equality, have just as much right to live here as humans do. Insects have lived on this globe for millions of years. Their place is important here and nature keeps them in the proper balance with the available food supply without any help from us.

Who can see justice in a policy which refuses to share resources with any species but one’s own? Who can fail to be disgusted by a man like A.G. Kawamura declaring that California, all of its plants, people, animals, insects, water and soil are mine, mine, mine? How unintelligent, how greedy, how cruel.

CDFA, the USDA and their allies are living in the dark ages in terms of their understanding of how planet Earth works, convinced that they can control it all for the boundless gain of humankind. In their fumblings, their tragic misunderstandings, they threaten to kill not only all of our fellow creatures, but all of us, as well. These are uneducated people.

As the nighttime world grows warmer with the coming of summer, my husband and I are listening to the frogs with pangs of concern. Will this be the last summer we will hear their reassuring song? We have eagerly been awaiting the annual arrival of our favorite species of moth - the Hummingbird Moth which comes to sip from our nocturnal garden. Will this be the last year we witness the miracle of this incredibly wondrous species? That thought pains and frightens me beyond what the effort of words can express.

My gladness in being alive comes from finding myself living in communion with so many kinds of people, so many different animals, so many interesting bugs, so many fine plants. USDA and CDFA are designing to take all of this away from me and from you with their immoral spraying of California. So, I’m fighting not just for my health and life, but to secure the blessed diversity of our strange and beautiful planet. I know in my heart that moths deserve to be here. The evidence is all around us. We should honor that evidence and act out of gratitude for the lives we are given on this planet we are sharing with the fish, the birds, the animals, the moths.

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Credit for the beautiful photos used in this post goes to Kostia’s Flickr Photoset and Yelnoc’s Flickr Photoset.

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