L.A. Weekly, April 26, 2002
THE ANTS ARE BACK. A LITTLE EARLY THIS YEAR, and not yet
in the expected crowds, but definitely back.
Up until a few years ago, the ant world showed no interest in darkening
our door, or crossing our sill, or finding its way through the odd crack
in the plaster. It didn't matter h
ow many dishes piled up in the sink, how
many jars of jam or jelly were left open on the counter, how deep lay the
crumbs upon the floor, the ants did their business elsewhere. They stayed
in the yard. They kept their distance. This was fine with
me.
When I was a small fry -- and up until I
was a pretty big fry, really -- I was afraid of bugs. Almost any bug,
apart from the common housefly, with which I was inevitably familiar and
over which I felt a kind of mastery (also known as a fly swatter). Insects
of a more extravagant kind were rarely seen in our tidy Valley home; the
odd silverfish or spider sent us straight to DEFCON 1. I was a sensitive
child, and bugs were the stuff of nightmares, the real-life models for
monsters in movies I was too nervous to watch, but sometimes did. I know I
am a lot bigger than a spider, except for that giant spider in
Tarantula; still, who blames the elephant for fearing the mouse? I
am a lot bigger than a germ too (also called a bug), but that hasn't kept
me from catching cold.
I DON'T LIKE BUGS, but they keep coming into my life. Or
is it that I come into theirs? In 10th-grade Biology, we were forced to
perform genetic experiments on fruit flies. (As other classes were cutting
open frogs to better comprehend the wonder of life, I considered this a
lucky break.) The idea was to breed a blue-tailed, hatch-backed,
chicken-winged, cross-eyed fruit fly -- something like that -- and each
student was given his very own little batch of bugs to match up, Dolly
Levi style. In order to manipulate the subjects, to get them under a
microscope, then into the proper bottles, it was necessary to chloroform
them -- a skill that would qualify me now as an insect kidnapper, if I had
actually acquired it, if I hadn't killed them all. It's more delicate than
you might think, knocking out a fly.
A few
years later, I went to live in Florida, where the bugs can hardly be
called insects. Florida roaches are big and tough -- and can fly,
some of them. It was understood that the kitchen was theirs at night. Not
that their diet was restricted to food: One lived inside and off of
a clock I owned; another actually ate my homework. And there
were poisonous fire ants, which, given a certain amount of teamwork,
supposedly could kill a cow. (Killing a cow seems to be the standard
measure of insect power.) Somehow I became inured to their company, and to
that of their countless colorful cousins, as men in war come to accept,
you know, bombs and stuff. I got to know them, but I did not like them any
better. I kept my head down and thought of Norway.
SARAH, WHO DELIGHTS IN HER GARDEN and all the living
world, is always calling my attention to some crawly, squirmy thing. I am
always not coming over to look. As with many things that one does not
appreciate or understand, my first impulse regarding my bug brothers has
been to run away, and my second has been to kill them. Dropping
heavy books on the roaches, reaching for the Raid, bombing the house for
fleas.
But that was the old me, the old
fly-swatting me. While I'm no less inclined to run, I have grown more
tenderhearted. And a little more brave. There is a big wispy
something-or-other flying around in here right now, and I am keeping my
cool. Now I have trapped it behind the blinds, where it can flit out of my
notice and -- oh, now it's back. But I'm cool, I'm -- hold on a
minute.
I am glad you were not here
to see that.
As I was saying, we have
ants. (And unidentified wispy flying things.) After so many ant-free
years, we must have made their Guide Michelin, because suddenly one summer
it was like Grand Central Station in here, if New Yorkers were tiny, could
walk on walls and tended to move in orderly lines. Prompted by what local
cataclysm, food shortage or brute touristic urge I do not know, they came,
the ants, hurrying along their improvised trails, shouldering away bits of
cat food, stopping to exchange antish information. (Friskies! Mountains
of it!) If the aim of the kitchen detail was quickly evident, it was
harder to understand the conga line headed for the stereo, and the
scouting parties on my office desk, darting among the unpaid bills,
unlabeled cassettes, inoperative computer gear, sweat socks, bits of old
string, 9-volt batteries -- and, oh, all right, the occasional leftover
half sandwich.
Now we're a permanent
popular destination on the summer tour. At first I put out ant traps, but
something about the way they worked seemed cruel, and besides, they didn't
work. Wary coexistence is my present motto. Carry home your crumbs, little
ants. I will possibly not bother you. (Though I will try to keep the
kitchen clean, to reduce temptation.) If I can see people as ants -- note
metaphorical title of this space -- why not see ants as people? (The pure
ant I find too disturbing to contemplate.) I dress them up in the skin and
habits they wear in cartoons: going off to work in hardhats, carrying
yellow lunch pails. Big sweet eyes and the voice of Mel Blanc. Hi, Joe!
Howdy, Ed!
It's a flawed concept on
several levels, I admit, though perhaps karmically responsible. Nowadays,
I refrain as a rule from killing insects, but when I break that rule,
thoughtlessly, reflexively, fearfully, or just out of laziness -- it is
usually easier to squash a bug than to think of what to do with it -- I do
apologize. I consider it a lapse. I spare as many as is . . . convenient,
and a few more than that. I am a capricious but generally well-intentioned
superior being -- your average God, in other words. I can't imagine what
they say about me back at the anthill, but I hope it isn't all bad. (And
it better not be.)
Illustration by Hadley Hooper