TheBanyanTree: invasion of the ants

[Kitty Park]

Tobie, I appreciated receiving (and reading) the unedited Invasion. As your
brain worked, your fingers grasped the words quickly (although letters were
sometimes errant in their placement), and conveyed your immediate
ruminations.  Not pristine as writing is supposed to be, but obviously
fresh.

I always enjoy what you share with us. This, with the unexpected errors,
was equally entertaining, because it was spontaneous.

Kitty

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

> Not the body snatchers
>
>
>
>
> 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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