Ants

I find ants appealing.  I am fascinated by their social behaviors, their industrious nature, and their speed of movement.  Perhaps, most of all, I admire their physical strength.  Imagine yourself hoisting up a mid-sized pickup and packing it around with you as you shop for your groceries.  That is pretty much an equivalent of what an ant can do.  And, by the way, you cannot use your arms to carry the pickup—you have to lift and carry it using your teeth.

Some mornings, as yesterday morning, I pour my first cup of coffee and then go outside so I might sit and sun on the steps and take in the day.  More often than not, I end up watching ants as they arrive and depart, as they weave and scurry along the concrete.  A significant population of them lives down inside the cold-joints and cracks in the concrete of my drive.  Every so often I pick out a single ant and try to follow that single journey as I sit there in the sun—a dizzying project I assure you.  A typical ant bolts ahead, halts, loops around a few times, hooks over to an interesting grain of sand, whisks off to greet another passing ant, circles again, and on and on and on.  Once more than three ants gather in a single location, and begin whisking about more-or-less together, keeping track of just one is nearly impossible.

More than anything, ants are tenacious to a fault.  They will work to their death, ignoring all manner of threat.  Beside them, we are slow and dull.  Across my drive, the ants drag grasshopper wings, detached beetle legs, whole beetles, seeds, and anonymous flecks from faraway places.

Ants are builders of good dirt.  Those living underground aerate the soil.  They contribute to the clean-up and decomposition of all organic material that falls to the earth.

I have on my property perhaps seven or eight huge red and piles, which I do not disturb in any manner.  I have forgiven the red ants for their transgressions against me in my childhood years (on two occasions one of their soldiers climbed up my pant legs and managed to bite what I can only describe as a very tender spot).   I assume, at the same time, they have forgiven me for stirring them up with a stick.

As I write this, a new ant pile is forming very near our lake patio.  While my neighbors would most certainly poison-out the colony, I am pleased.   I caution all visiting children to be careful of this new nest.  I tell them they are more than welcome to go visit the ants, then add: “but don’t mess with them...they may well have something on us.”

--Mitchell Hegman