The flying ants showed up in mid-July, as usual. Each summer they whir into my life, unbidden and unwelcome, like the airborne monkeys in The Wizard of Oz–creepy and scary, highly motivated, seemingly guided by a dark force.
These are red ants, good-sized, as ants go. Though not exactly warlike–I have never been bitten–they are, nonetheless, aggressive and disagreeable beasts with an impressive talent for creating misery.
On hot summer nights they sneak around the window screens and into my off-grid shack near the South Rim, arriving in twos or threes just after dark to quickly take center stage in my world. By morning they have vanished.
During their visits, the ants crawl aimlessly up the walls and window glass, dart and buzz madly around the ceiling lights, and go especially berserk under the spell of the lamp above my easy chair.
They touch down briefly on the open page of whatever book I’m trying to read, then take flight again, bouncing off my forehead like winged hailstones before landing somewhere else–always just beyond swatting reach.
But these home invaders are virtually indestructible, anyway. Against them, a flyswatter is a wholly inadequate weapon. An especially hard slap with a rolled magazine might slow one down, but not for long.
If one of these creatures lands on my neck or forearm, I instinctively try to crush it. This usually fails. The thing will roll under the heel of my hand like a tiny bit of gravel, then bumble away, disoriented but undaunted.
I could try bug spray, but as a tree-hugging, bleeding-heart Earth lover, I won’t. (And if I did, my guess is the ants would somehow manage to point the can toward me, and maybe even find a way to push the button.)
Only when these critters land on the floor, and I’m armed with adequate footwear, is it possible to neutralize one. The crunch of the exoskeleton is both disgusting and highly satisfying.
But replacements soon arrive. What exactly are they doing here?
It’s not about food (they ignore crumbs on the counter or the meal on my plate, if they happen to arrive during my own feeding time). Nor do they seem interested in taking up permanent residence: their annual visitations last just a week or two, then the ants disappear until next year.
Though they never display anything that looks like mating behavior, these intrusions are probably somehow related to sex. Baffling nighttime conduct usually is.
In any case, I’m sure there will be new generations of ants winging their ways into my life for summers to come. After all, ants have inhabited the earth for more than a hundred million years; we humans not even a million. (Six thousand or so, I suppose, if you’re a Creationist.)
Though I don’t like them, I do respect the ants’ right to exist. I just wish they would do it somewhere else.
But if they could speak, the ants–and plenty of our other fellow species–would surely say the same thing about us. We self-appointed masters of the universe invade their space just as reliably–and with far worse impacts–as the ants do mine.
So for these few nights in deep summer, when my peace of mind is stolen by a few uninvited arthropods, I’ll try to remember who was here first, and who is likely to remain after I’m gone. There is room for all of us, for now, if we’re willing to share.
Michael Wolcott’s email address is michaeljwolcott@gmail.com
