To kill or not to kill

Relax. I am not thinking about people but my first trip round the garden this morning has released the latent killer in me. There stands a very pretty small oak tree. It was fine yesterday but this morning it is half eaten. At first I thought the deer were back but the culprits were all too visible. Furry long green and yellow caterpillars were munching hundreds of them! At their present rate the tree would be gone by lunch time.
This problem is a long standing one for me. In the days when I flirted with Buddhism I never killed anything. The result was a spider infested house and roses that never got as far as blooming. Green fly, slugs, snails they are all a problem and I still can't actually kill them directly. But it depends on what damage I find when I go out in the morning. If I'm cross I deal with them severely. The snails go over the hedge not into someone else's garden but onto the road. If they can move fast enough they can get home. I know that's cowardly but it works for me..
This morning I shook off all the caterpillars into a bag. Then what? I still don't know but the tree has been sprayed with an anti bug chemical. The ethics of killing small insects has always been dodgy for me but sometimes it feels like war and then my latent warrior springs into being and I kill. I am a bad person on those days!
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