The Ants Go Marching

Growing up in the desert, we grew used to continually encountering the extremely hardy native inhabitants of the land. Most plants around our house were not at all pleasant to touch, and the animals reacted to human interference in a variety of ways, from squirting fake blood all over, to attacking with poisonous stingers.

Ants in the desert come in several varieties, and in our childhood we learned the range from semi-indestructible to completely-indestructible. Once, engaged in one of those illogical acts of childish generosity, my siblings and I decided to help a funnel-web spider by feeding it an ant. We captured and dropped a fire ant into its web. The fire ant promptly ripped the web to pieces and attacked the spider when it appeared to see what was going on. When we pulled the ant away with a stick and tried to smash it for its impertinence, it refused to be smashed. It continued to rampage in blind anger, until we relocated it to an area where there was nothing around for it to harm and finally left it alone.

In spite of what this childhood anecdote might suggest, I am not an insect killer. Truth be told, I am ridiculously soft-hearted as these things go. I can't stand to kill anything, not even a bug, unless it is a mosquito trying to inject me with a deadly virus. So, when ants here invaded our kitchen, we reacted with non-violent resistance. We blocked their entrance. They found another away in. We sprinkled white and red pepper on the counters. They marched right through. We made every effort to peacefully communicate that they were not welcome. Still, the little invaders persisted. I do not, on principle, mind sharing our leftovers with ants. But I definitely don't enjoy picking little stinging insects out of my salad during dinner.

You can imagine my surprise when I finally grew irritated one day and flicked one of these small Iowan ants across the counter - only to see it crumple against the kitchen wall, jerk spasmodically a few times, and die. I'd never seen an ant expire that easily in my life. I was used to ants that would continue to come at me in a terminatoresque fashion, pulling themselves along by their front legs if they lost the back half of their abdomens, or continuing to bite with their jaws if they actually lost their entire body.

Since then I've paid more attention and discovered these ants die with appalling ease. They die if they fall into a drop of water. They die if a small slice of tomato falls on top of them. They die if you bump them with a sponge when you're trying to wipe off the counter. They die and die and die, and leave their grotesque little bodies all over the place, to make you feel guilty for the loss of life, when they are clearly the invaders here.

I will never understand how such a delicate derivative of a species has managed to survive all this time. However, perhaps I will take a few home with me when I visit Tucson next week to make amends with the funnel web spiders.