Laudator Temporis Acti

In her book Animals on the Other Side, psychic Sylvia Browne shares her insights about animals in the afterlife and answers questions like:

• Does my pet miss me?
  
• Did he know I loved him?
  
• Can she come back to visit me?
  
• Do snakes and bugs live on the Other Side, too?
  

To the last question she answers:

All God's creatures exist on the Other Side with only one exception. The only living things I have never seen at Home are insects. I am not sure exactly why that is, but I have never seen a spider, fly, or any other type of insect...

Far be it from me to disparage eyewitness testimony, but frankly I'm surprised. Asked what his scientific studies revealed about the nature of God, J.B.S. Haldane replied, "An inordinate fondness for beetles." There are about 450,000 known species of beetles on earth, but none in heaven, according to Browne.

When she passes over once and for all, let's hope Browne doesn't encounter an afterlife like that described by Dostoyevsky in Crime and Punishment (part IV, chapter 1):

"I don't believe in a future life," said Raskolnikov.

Svidrigailov sat lost in thought.

"And what if there are only spiders there, or something of that sort," he said suddenly.

"He is a madman," thought Raskolnikov.

"We always imagine eternity as something beyond our conception, something vast, vast! But why must it be vast? Instead of all that, what if it's one little room, like a bath house in the country, black and grimy and spiders in every corner, and that's all eternity is? I sometimes fancy it like that."