TheBanyanTree: invasion of the ants

[David Rubin]

Enjoyed the r-ant! Here in Florida we basically accept the omnipresence of
the little buggers. And I won't mention the giant palmetto bugs that fly in
your face when you're trying to enjoy a nice evening sitting on your garden
bench.

On Mon, Aug 5, 2019 at 7:48 PM <tobie at shpilchas.net> wrote:

> Not the body snatchers
>
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> To you out there all over the place,
>
>
>         I have to tell you this.
>
>         There are ants in my bed.  Not a lot of them  — no caravan (I will
> build a great wall!), but teeny tiny, weentsy, beentsy little micro-ants,
> singly, as if they’ve lost their wee way and are begging for a quick
> delivery from their minuscule existence.  Why in my bedroom?  This is not
> where I store the comestibles.  No bag of sugar or grease (do ants like
> grease? Or is this cockroaches I’m thinking about?), no sand or dirt to
> make a hill, and, as I said, no ant population numerous enough for them to
> socialize amongst themselves.  I’ve never seen such microscopic ants.
>
>         I remember in Silver Spring, Maryland, all the insects were a
> larger variety of their smaller cousins out here on the left coast.  The
> ants there were big enough that you could plainly see their anatomical
> structure, tho9ugh, I admit, not large enough to see the expressions on
> their faces when they see you coming at them with a shoe.  My mother has a
> monthly pest control company who are scheduled to make regular
> extermination rounds.  The house is large and three stories tall. The
> basement does have that finished, or quasi finished, apartment in it where
> damn lucky family members have lived, rent-free, while growing up, or
> getting their shit together, or going to school nearby.  Even I had my
> stint living in the basement.
>
>         But that was ages ago.  Since then, every nephew, cousin, nephew
> or cousin’s friend and girl or boyfriend (sometimes both) has lived there.
> And each beneficiary moved on, leaving behind the trash and ugly memories
> they didn’t want to bring with them. By now the accumulated detritus of the
> succession of lost and found young people finding their way has grown
> invisible by its sheer ubiquitousness.  The point is that the apartment is
> one world and the rest of the basement, a wild map of crawl space and
> storage areas under the house, under the front stairs, behind flimsy wood
> panel doors put in when the previous owners (65 years ago!) decided to
> upgrade the basement, is another.  How do you figure out where the ants are
> coming from?  Yes, whether brings them into the house — wet and rainy — or
> drought, both attract them.  But these micro-ants? While sitting in bed, my
> lap top on my lap (the appropriateness is an embarrassment) an ant crawled
> over the edge and had to be crushed, by thumb, on the, "Caps Lock," key.
> Stupid ant!  Had it been even marginally savvy, capable of irony, it would
> have made straight for, "Delete".
>
>         I don’t like insects. And at this time, I really doin’t care
> whether ants are classified as insects, bugs, beetloids or marsupials
> because the point is that I don’t like them. This is not to say that I find
> them uninteresting, or that I hate them for being murderers or rapists,
> that they are all drug lords, live in shit-hole countries and worship
> inexcusable gods.  They are innocent of malice, corruption and bigotry and
> when they invade a house they do so without the self-righteous narcissism
> characteristic of their bipedal sapient earth-mates.  We’re the ones who
> invented sin and we’re the only ones drawn to its imagined allure.  Ants do
> to our sticky kitchen counters what we do, on a rather larger scale, to the
> planet.  Yes, so damn us to hell and exalt the humble (witless) ant?  Be
> that as it may, I just can’t bring myself to like them, offer them my
> gracious hospitality or, to be blunt, refrain from killing them.
>
>         There must be some instinctive element at work that makes us
> recoil from them; it seems to be so universal (with the exception of those
> cultures in which the appearance of an infestation of ants needs nothing
> more than a good dash of salt and a spoon).  Insects, including the
> varietal categories that I don’t care to differentiate, certainly hold some
> fascination, intellectually, when confined to likenesses on paper, studied
> objectively from a vantage point removed by a dimension of reality or two
> (three even better).  Moths and butterflies can be beautiful.  I’ve
> examined photographs that show their loveliness  —  what inventive
> creations!  But if the most stunningly gorgeous moth were to fly ever so
> gracefully at my face, my arms would involuntarily fly up to protect me,
> and that includes swatting at it with intent to annihilate.  There would
> also be concurrent shrieking.
>
>         When an ant somehow found its way to crawl over my laptop’s
> keyboard, I removed it firmly with my finger.  A few minutes later I
> watched another making its way across the bedsheet.  I omitted the
> respectful consideration of their lives. I did not carefully capture them
> alive under a glass, then reverently carry them outside and deposit them on
> a patch of welcoming top soil.  Nor did I search for an anthill with their
> names on it.  I swiftly exercised eye hand coordination and put them out of
> my misery.  The thought that there were ants (no matter how small) in my
> bed repelled me  —  that, mixed with what I believe to be an instinctive
> fear.  I did a bit of research, went downstairs and performed a bit of
> kitchen alchemy.
>
>         One cup of water.
>         Eight teaspoons of sugar, mixed well
>         and then one half teaspoon of boric acid.
>
>         I shook that up in a jar until the sugar had dissolved.  Then I
> fetched two cotton balls, dipped them in the concoction until they were
> soaked, put them each on their own little rimmed platform (child-proof pill
> bottle caps are ideal; they have regularly spaced slits in them so the ants
> can march right on through.)  I carried them back upstairs and placed one
> on  he floor near my bed where I’ve seen ants formicating, and one under my
> bed where I can’t see anything.  When next I checked, the first cotton ball
> was black with eager ants.  Of course I couldn’t see the one under my bed.
> They will suck up the sweet poison juice and bring it back to their nest to
> inform the others.  Someone is bound to inform the Queen.  And then,
> slowly, they will vacate the premisise and leave me to sleep in relative
> peace.
>
>         The other day I was taking Meyshe somewhere.  He was looking out
> the window to the business of people  —  back and forth, forth and back  —
> in purposeful brownian motion.  He mused out loud, "Why am I thinking of a
> spider walking down the street?"  I told him I didn’t know why, but what
> kind of spider was he talking about?  A spider would likely get stepped
> on.  He corrected the image.
>
>         "No, a life-sized spider."
>
>         "You mean life-sized for a spider or a human being?"
>
>         "For a person."
>
>         "That’s what I thought.  Well, think about it.  A spider as big as
> a person?  People would be terrified."
>
>         It made me think of all those monster movies of the '50s.  There
> was always some animal that had been exposed to deadly radiation and become
> as big as buildings.  I* described a typical monster flick where the people
> are all running for cover, women (especially and exclusively women and
> children) screaming, "EEEEEEEEEK!"  Everyone afraid that the monster, in
> this case a spider, is going to do to them what we do to spiders all the
> time.
>
>         ("Oooh!! They’re as tiny as ants.  Look at them run!")
>
>         There is always a hero/scientist (lab coat, glasses, beakers and
> pitchers) and his buxom lab assistant (lab coat, a pile of make-up,
> jewelry, stilleto heels).  Everyone is trying to figure out how to kill the
> irradiated monster spider.  They shoot it: nope.  They send in the army
> (tanks, ballistics): no effect.  Then the airforce (planes and helicopters
> buzzing overhead, bombs dropping): nothing.  Then the scientist/hero and
> his luscious assistant execute a last ditch plan that everyone else
> rejected, laughed at:  "Can’t work.  "You’re mad!!"  So we see the spider,
> growing bigger, mre rapacious every hour, crushing cadillacs
> (un-American!), flipping fistsful of pedestrians, delivery trucks (milk
> truck would make for good cinema and the, "OHNO!" factor), lawn flamingoes
> out of their rightful places in the social order.
>
>         "Is there no one to save us!? No hope?"
>
>         Long shot of terrorist arachnid rampaging.  Camera begins to zoom
> in on the zillion eyed spider face.  It looks up into the sky and there is
> a gigantic, menacing, incredibly huge       SHOE.
>
>         And Cosmopolis is saved!  Science triumphs again!!!!
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> "It's a shame chaos requires such little maintenance" THS
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> Tobie Shapiro
> mailto:tobie at shpilchas.net <mailto:tobie at shpilchas.net>
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