go to the ant...

The little blond ones were cute, zipping around for minuscule bits of nourishment. The biting little red ones i never saw inside; they lurked in the grass to nip between your toes. The black medium-sized ones looked like they meant business and cleaned away dead lizards. The army ones were frightening enough to inspire (hence resemble) horror film and sci-fi-bad-guy-creatures. I don't like squishing any of them; they don't really squish, they crunch, and i feel guilty because they work so hard. It's not like they are cockroaches. [And after recently seeing ants personified in Antz (hey, it was dubbed in German, i was a substitute for a high school German class), it will be harder to squish them or wipe them off the counter with a sponge. BTW, army ants kind of do look like the soldier ants in that film...]

I also feel guilty squishing them because i'm grateful that they cleared away dead cockroaches, meaning i didn't have to dispose of the remains. It was hard enough to accurately hit a cockroach with a shoe; if it hadn't been for adrenaline, i'm sure i'd never have hit them since i was usually simultaneously leaping onto a chair, yelping, and throwing the shoe. I didn't want to go over and see a squished cockroach, or worse, see it wave its antennae at me and charge. If i just left it there under the shoe, sure enough, by morning, the cockroach would be entirely gone.

One night after work i didn't feel like preparing a real dinner, so i made oatmeal. I dropped a flake or two in the process. Before i could wipe off the counter, the little guys were out scavenging.

I watched an ant struggle to carry a whole oatmeal grain. He gave up the idea of carrying and began tugging it, slowly moving backward. What a meaningless struggle. He's hauling away on a piece of food, who knows how far the ant hill is and i bet he gets stepped on or sprayed before he gets home. And if he's not stepped on, he'll have to go out again and struggle with another unwieldy bit of food. Why not pick up of a grain of sugar? Why keep tugging on that bit of oatmeal? I raised my hand to wipe him off the counter and off the face of the earth...and couldn't do it. It had been a hard day (hence the oatmeal for dinner instead of something more exciting) and i felt a little squished myself.

I got out a sharp knife and carefully cut the oatmeal flake in two. The ant, unfazed, hoisted it up and carried it off.

I'm not sure what that says about my sanity, but i felt better, and snapped this photo of him as a reminder that there can be small, satisfying things found even in a crummy day. ;-) Maybe it was also a reminder that oatmeal is worth the work, even compared to the ease of carrying off sugar. And i'm not talking about diets.