Antagonist Update

Did not see or maim or kill any ants today, although reports indicate other family members cannot make such innocuous statements.

Antie Maim

I did not knowingly or deliberately kill or maim any ants today, to the best of my antcollection, I mean, recollection.

I saw one or two ants on the cabinets in my background or peripheral vision today and chose to ignore them. So then, the Battle of Antitthem was put on hold.

lobster? or crab?

"I should been a pair of ragged claws / Scuttling across the floors of silent seas." -- T.S. Eliot in "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

And would such scuttling claws pinch their pincers to pick up any scurrying underwater ants?

(Just aiming for the high-brow, even if it's a stretch scientifically.)

antics, again

Getting either more spiritual or lazier (not necessarily opposites, right?): killed only two ants today.

But I think I only saw two ants. And how many did the ant traps silently and slowly execute?

Maybe, just maybe, the next ant I see, I'll say, "Hi, as you were, keep walking; plenty of room here on the planet for both of us. Leave our cereal alone, though."

ants in my pants -- not yet

This morning my daughter goes to eat her Honey Bunches of Oats breakfast cereal and decides to throw out the whole package, upon finding bunches of ants, honey, in the cereal. Cereal killer, those ants. Or us. I thought it was an extreme, um, antic, to discard the whole contents ["contants"??], but, hey, the dog had just thrown up on the kitchen floor. We were under *ant*icipatory duress; she had a bus to catch.

Maybe we should surrender in the sense of simply regarding the ants as food, sans chocolate.

Or live in "peaceable kingdom" harmony with the ants. Let it / them be.

It is futile to crush the happenstance ant crawling into or out of the cabinet and to fight off the low hum of guilt as I rub my fingers together to expunge the dusty insect remains. As with most wars, strategies need to be reconsidered.

Are the ant traps working but more slowly than anticipated?

What about the Ortho Home Defense Indoor Insect Killer ("use with confidence around food, children & pets")? ("Made with pure orange peel extract.") Is the "confidence" noted on the label for the welfare of the food, children, and pets? Or confidence in the death of the ants? I sprayed some on paper towels and rubbed the walls and cabinet doors and edges. Hey, maybe it chased the ants into the cereal boxes and other boxes! By the way, the plastic container with tight lid? -- the one I told spouse and daughter to buy to protect against ants? -- it sits in the cabinet. Empty. Bare. Naked. No cereal or anything else in it.

Stay tuned to see if this blog is crawling with more antie-bellum words next time.

antsy

Why do they so annoy me?

Will they swarm my bread?

What are their numbers?

I've killed perhaps 28 ants today, or maybe 17. I think two have gotten away. "Gotten away" means gleefully slipped into the cabinet, running under and around glasses, cups, mugs. Smirking?

How have I allowed this to become a real-life video game?

What is the source of my murderous pleasure as I squash them, rubbing the dust of the ants off on my clothes? (Awkward question; lots of prepositions.)

The ant traps are so much less direct, so much more passive. They require a certain degree of patience -- and faith that they will work.

They are ants.

They say I am human.

Can I write this off as some macabre and quotidian fiction?

May I?

Who would expose my lies?

Antie Maim

I saw one ant, in the sugar bowl on the counter. No others. Just one.

One ant, in oceanic sweetness, risking drowning in As Good As It Gets.

I pinched a bit of sugar and ant together, walked out the door, and tossed it all outside, over the chain-link fence, into the weeds. Rescue or relief (for the ant, not the sugar).

The next day: ants all over the counter.

Vengeance is mine: ant traps (do they work? they seemed to after a few days; they did on the other counter, across the kitchen) and much ant death by crushing. Thumbs and other fingers squashing any ant in sight. My thumbs and fingers. Like some Character in an Old Testament chronicle. The ant crusher's ANThem? "Under My Thumb" by the Rolling Stones, of course.

Whether executing passive ant murder by chemical traps or active extinction by thumb crushing, I ain't no Buddha or Gandhi.

Except in the tiny ant eyes of SugarAnt1, wherever he or she, and the few grains of sugar, are.