What's Bugging Me.
I have taken to watching ants lately after one happened to stray across the screen of my laptop in the backyard. I don't think he was very bright as he did not stop to read and contemplate the words of wisdom I was putting on the screen. In fact, he seemed to be absolutely oblivious to everything around him. (I say him because my wife said he's a male).
My main experience with ants was reading the story "Leningen vs. the Ants" in high school where a swarm of ants in South America over ran a plantation devouring everything in sight and creating a swath of destruction miles wide. That was before Terminix.
In any event, my ant was definitely not a member of that tribe. Quite frankly, I initially thought he was dumber than a brick.
He meandered down my arm to the picnic table where he promptly climbed halfway up a coffee cup, then abruptly changed his mind and headed back the way he came. I assume he didn't like his coffee black. From there he found a vase of flowers and wound his way to the top, surveyed the territory and apparently found it wanting. Back down he went, but he did it on the underside of the flowers and upside down, then turns around and goes back from whence he came, again upside down.
He wandered all over the countryside for half an hour with no apparent plan at all. At one point he picked up a dead beetle 10 times his size and paraded about as if he didn't know what to do with it but knew instinctively it must be valuable. Up and over napkins and silverware and dishes and pans then down the other side when going around would have been 20 times easier. Then he suddenly dropped his prize and went off in another direction as if he forgot he even had it. It would be the equivalent of me loading a Ford pickup on my back and hiking 10 miles through the Adirondack mountains and then suddenly remembering I was a Chevy guy.
He was tiring to watch and after half an hour of entertinment I dozed off.
It was while I was missing that he chanced to run into the caramel nut roll and when I woke up an hour later I found a family reunion taking place. In typical timing that's when the wife chose to reappear. After congratulating me on inviting all the ants in the neighborhood to our picnic table for lunch she also explained that she had looked up this ant on the Internet and she believed it was a carpenter ant and while my caramel nut roll was dessert the house was probably the main course. She suggested I call an exterminator. I knew better and headed for the hardware store.......to be continued.
Posted by donburnshomepage
at 10:54 AM EDT
Updated: Sunday, June 23, 2013 8:30 PM EDT
