2005-01-17 2:27 p.m. Since I got back from Christmas, my kitchen has been home to trails full of ants. They busy themselves with much head-bobbing and antennae-waving. All in a row. I can't tell where they're coming from or where they're going. They're not eating any of my food. And I don't leave dishes out for them to snack off of. Every few days, when the cleaning mood strikes me, I'll take a hot sponge and wipe off the entire counter, ants and all, sending a few dozen spinning down into the sink. I wondered what they made of their recurring cataclysms. With no one alive to pass along a warning, the remaining ants must be like those early explorers who would come across abandoned forts. The front doors ajar, dinners left uneaten, nothing but the sound of wind in the trees. This morning, though, was something new. I had laid down ant traps last week after realizing the ants weren't going to leave on their own. These are little plastic domes with multiple entrances. The insides have some sort of tasty poison that will attract the ants. They go in, eat up, then take a bit with them to share with the queen. Eventually, every ant who ate the poison dies, the nest collapses without a queen, tragedy on an enormous scale (from an ant perspective.) But this morning, I noticed that instead of two ant traps on the counter, there were three. Ants were walking in and out of two of them, bellies full of poison, but none were approaching the mysterious third. I looked closely and realized that it wasn't an ant trap. For one thing, it was smoking a bit. For another thing, I watched a tiny door open and tiny humanoid creatures come out. Fascinating stuff. Made me forget all about the breakfast I had gone in there to make. I watched them walk across the counter, leaning in close. It was as hard to tell the three creatures that came out apart as it is to distinguish between ants. Made all the more difficult when the ants realized they were there and came pouring out of the poison houses. Despite being outnumbered, the tiny travelers stuck together and accounted for themselves fairly well. I smelled a faint vinegar smell and the ants began shaking their heads & retreating. I think the travelers had some sort of chemical spray. I grabbed a banana off the far said of my counter to eat while I watched, thinking "Of course! If they could travel here, of course they'd have weapons for self-defense." Once the counter had cleared of ants, the travelers split up and took a look at the entire counter, regularly meeting back at their ant-trap shaped vessel. Presumably to exchange notes. They stayed for about twenty minutes. I imagine for creatures that small that they experience time differently. that for them, it was a very long outing. It was pretty neat. Damn shame that our size difference made communication impossible. I should have liked to have warned them against eating the contents of the ant traps. I wiped it all up with a sponge a few hours later. When the ants come back, if they come back, I wonder what they'll make of the new, poisonless structure left by the voyagers. Damn shame the size and species difference makes that impossible. I should very much like to talk to ants. See what they make of it. |
1. today is nice 3. happy yesterdays 8. thanks for hosting 4. doing other things |
(Proof that I am the only one reading.) |