Vegan mother doesn't kill lice on daughter's head. Her unconventional approach is...

The vegan mother does not want to kill the lice on her daughter's scalp. (Representational)

A mother in Australia has adopted a strikingly unconventional stance on her daughter’s head lice, one that has ignited a debate and left many perplexed. The reason? She's committed to not harming the nits in any way, driven by her adherence to a vegan lifestyle and she doesn’t want to kill any living being.

The peculiar scenario came to light through an advice column, where a concerned parent recounted her bewilderment. She knew the girl and her mother in question; her own daughter was the best friend of the girl with the lice problem.

She had been visiting and the woman noticed her relentlessly scratching her head and realised she has a bout of head lice.

She decided to tell the girl's mother and realised that she already knew and the nits were being combed and released into the garden to ensure their survival. This unexpected practice, as baffling as it may sound, had been embraced as a means to adhere to the vegan ethos.

"I don't want to separate the kids, but there's no way 'combing them into the garden' is going to work (industrial-grade pesticide barely works) and I don't want my daughter covered in vermin," the parent lamented sharing the story of her daughter’s friend’s predicament.

The ‘agony aunt’, the columnist the woman was writing to, didn't mince words in her response. She characterized the approach as "sanctimonious" and even went so far as to dub the mother a "monster."

The columnist raised an eyebrow at the irony – while the intent was to save these minuscule creatures from harm, the reality could be a "slow and painful" for the nits in the garden environment.

The satire-laden solution she offered was for the woman to become a DIY hairdresser to rid the young girl's scalp of the lice possibly without the mother’s knowledge.