Ants

Let me tell you about something.  The ants in Thailand do not mess around.  They are quick and they are effective (if effective is indeed a word which can be used to describe ants).  I was surprised to find them in my fifth floor apartment (I know what you're thinking--Really, Ben?  You didn't think the ants would be able to figure out five flights of stairs?) on the second day of my living here, but what surprised me more, and has continued to surprise me, is the speed at which they locate any whisper of sugar.  Several times, I have set down a plate, after having eaten the food from it, turned to do something and no more than two minutes later, looked back to see these miniature black fiends beginning to swarm.

I have discovered that in many ways it's easier to just live with the ants.  For the first several days, I was quick to wipe any sort of ant-killing object (a field of possible objects which is larger than I had ever imagined), taking the lives of dozens of ants in one fell swoop;  I went beyond reaction and was proactively seeking out ants and other irritants to extinguish.  Unfortunately, two days of having killed absolutely everything in my apartment, only to discover that they had the resilience of the Danish resistance and the recollective capacity often attributed to goldfish.  At first I thought, These ants don't understand that if they come out they will die?  Then I realized what my mistake was--I was being too thorough.  How could the rest of the ants possibly know the consequences of their actions unless told?  Clearly, the ants had no understanding of the Bermuda Triangle Effect (an effect that I, to the best of my knowledge, just made up), where one usually becomes hesitant to go to a location after numerous amounts of one's contemporaries do not return from that location.  Thus, a new plan was hatched.

I would leave a few survivors, in the hope that my name would soon be spoken only haltingly, in whispers, or not at all out of the fear that the utterance of my handle should somehow conjure my appearance.  I tried to pick the ants that looked like they would exaggerate the accounts of my attacks.  This proved harder than I originally supposed, given that most ants look alike (a notion to which they, like most people/organisms, take a certain amount of offense) and, generally speaking, have no discernable character traits (or at least not the ones for which I was looking).  My plan was less than successful also because I did not take into account the fact that the ants seemed to not care at all that I was murdering their kith and kin; they continued their steadfast task of securing little sugar morsels for themselves or their home.  These ants were the embodiment of James Brown, if he were an ant, and the task at which he was the hardest working ant was not show business, but grubbering away at pomegranate juice on a plate.  I respected this.  Also, I thought "Papa's Got A Brand New Bag" was a good song.

My decision to spare a few quickly grew into a decision to allow more ant activity around the home.  Let's face it, in certain areas, I can be quite lazy.  The continuous, eternal and fruitless job of killing ants had lost its original appeal; I understood now that my swiping merely delayed the inevitable and, having discovered that my name would not be spoken in hushed tones or be the subject of mysterious ant songs, my ant-killing had lost its luster.

Arguably, I could just clean up food faster, but sometimes I like to wait and see if the food will come off on its own.  Let's call that an experiment.  It isn't going particularly well.

I was given the advice, after discovering a cereal box from which only one bowl of cereal had been prepared (it is admittedly generous to call pouring soy milk on flakes "preparation") to be moving with the activity of ants, that any package I opened, or food I hoped would remain undisturbed, should be placed in the refrigerator quickly; it seemed sound advice.  Alas, the ants in my apartment are a little more rough-and-tumble than those in the other apartments (they did, after all, scale five stories of linoleum).  Today I saw ants in my refrigerator.  There weren't many, and, regrettably, they weren't wearing the delightful little ant-parkas that would have made their trespass quasi-acceptable.

It goes without saying, ladies and gentlemen, that war in 501 has begun anew.