Growing
up in rural Sweetwater Alabama, a lot of my time was spent outdoors. With living
a life outdoors comes the knowledge of creepy critters and their ways of life.
One learns to steer clear of the crawlies who bite or sting: hornets, wasps,
bees. Ants.
As
one with an allergic reaction to ant bites, I’ve learned early on how to not
simply hate ants, but to loathe them. Equipped with a magnifying glass and a
heart of malice towards those six-legged parasites, I’d manipulate the sunrays into
raging death-beams that vaporized carpenters and harvesters alike. I felt no sympathy
towards these ants because I’m sure they felt no sympathy for me when my skin
would swell and welt wherever one of those malicious marauders tasted my flesh.
For years I was more or less content with the hate-hate relationship that I had
cultivated with this species. I figured if I was going to continue getting bit,
then I’d trample every hill, I’d dose every line, I’d press every exoskeleton.
But one day, after a fierce battle with the ants, both sides suffering heavily,
I had an epiphany. While rubbing in copious amounts of Goldbond on my flesh
wounds, I realized that there was another way, a better way, to live than in
constant confrontation with these picnic pillagers. Simply live and let live.
When I
go back and look at all the run-ins I had with this colony, I shamefully
remember that I was always the one to first sound the trumpets of war. I had to
really sit and think about it. Ants don’t know me. They don’t go out of there
way to scale my slopes in search for a piece of uncovered skin to sink their
pincers into. Every instance in which I was bitten, I first kicked a mound or
displaced a vital rock. I was the impetus. Ever since this realization, I’ve become
less malicious towards ants. Don’t get me wrong, whenever I see one indoors, I go
crazy with haemolymph-lust and begin spraying left and right. I just no longer
go out of my way to harm their civilizations.
Now
for the real question. What are magnifying glasses supposed to be used for?
No comments:
Post a Comment