Consider The Ant

Evening chores seem to multiply around here. Since the roommates are off doing whatever they are doing away from the house, I’m watering their plants that they were so keen on getting. That they insisted on plants not suited for this climate is a different rant. One of the flowering plants was originally in a pot set on the ground. When the gophers decided that plastic was only a challenging barrier, the pot was moved to a higher position inside of a concrete decorative planter.

With the pot now off the ground, no more trouble would be had. Right?

This pot’s idiosyncrasy is that it has to be watered twice. The first watering, no matter how thorough, is never enough as the dirt has pulled away from the pot and most of the water just drains out like a sieve. You have to water it briefly, walk away while the dirt swells, then come back and water it thoroughly. Which is what I did. Just enough water to get the dirt wet. Then water the rest of the plants before coming back to the pot again for the thorough watering.

Just as I raised the pitcher, I noticed something crawling along the rim of the faded pot. Ants. Now this pot is in a raised concrete planter, sitting in the middle of a standard driveway, at least twenty feet from the closest bare dirt. And there are ants pouring out of the pot.

The little black ants are circling the rim, running into each other, in a frantic scramble. I look over the exterior of the pot, and see no other ants. Curious, I start to pour water into the pot. The number of ants fleeing to the rim intensifies. And as I pour the water (slowly, so not to force out the swollen dirt), I see ants carrying little white things in their mandibles. They congregate under my shadow, sensing my hand is near. I get the feeling that if they could jump the barely one inch of space between my flesh and them, they would, and continue climbing upward in their attempt to escape the flood.

Peering more closely at the little white things, I realize what the ants are carrying. Larvae. They are rescuing their descendants from what must be a world destroying flood. I have poured in enough water to cover the dirt with an inch of water. This is decimating their nest. Some of the other ants have taken the larvae up the stalks of the plant, and are hiding under the deep green leaves. But there are no other heights to reach. They are stranded.

I thought of picking up the pot and moving it to the grass where the fleeing ants could find new territory. But I realized none of the ants were moving down the dry outside of the pot. They were only seeking higher reaches. The ant queen had built her nest in what she thought was a safe and secure location, probably while the pot was still on the dirt beside the house. She did not know the pot had been moved, and the very walls that made her nest impregnable, now smothered it.

As I walked away, I realized how very much my predicament is like the ants. How much I am only concerned with the Now and the Immediate. How certain situations in my life seem like such a boon at the time, only to become a source of woe later on. The ant’s method of escaping water is reasonable, for any other time but now. Their continued insistence on finding more “up” only had them running in circles around the pot.

How many times in my life, did I react to a situation the way I had always before, only to find out my knee-jerk reaction was the absolute wrong thing to do. The ants were not completely without escape routes. They could go down the pot, and the planter, at any time. But they could not respond in this fashion. They are servants to their instinct, to a behaviour that could not adapt to changing circumstances.

I’m sure there is a lesson here, for those that see.

Make of that, what you may.