Wednesday, July 6, 2016



                         Ant Jesus and Uncle Larry           

I watched an ant poking around a spot where the kitchen wall meets the countertopThe ant suddenly disappeared seemingly into nowhere. 
After looking more closely, I sealed off a short almost invisible crevice at the spot.  Now the ant's mates seem to be stranded in the kitchen area.  They've apparently set up a hidden camp somewhere, maybe under the stove or the microwave.

When evening comes, they scamper out and patrol for a crumb or a drop. There's about 15 to 20 of them who will appear around the same time.  They walk down into the sink and back up and out again.  They investigate a piece of leaf debris on the floor and walk away unrequited.  They climb to the top of the vertical paper towel rack, I imagine for more than the view or because they can, as if it weren't a veritable Everest for them.

Each night I put a piece of cat kibble on a paper towel near the sink, and the ants will soon begin to assemble and snack for a while.  There's no need for them to starve to death.  Once the throng has more fully arrived, I very gently lift their entire pasture including their boulder of a snack and transport them out the back door onto the stoop where they continue their nibbling.

I wish I could know if the new ants that continue to appear each evening are the same ones I've been putting outside who are simply finding a way back into the kitchen for the meals.  It's not that I'd stop giving them their evening snack or harm them in any way.  They've become like family.  I want to continue to treat them as such.  I just want to know for curiosity's sake, though I've become happily enough resigned to living with the little engine of activity and mystery that is the ant.

My kitchen ants remind me of the bathroom ants I met while staying in a big ramshackle cottage on the island of Montserrat in 1978 where I rented a room in the springtime in a local family's home.  I'd never witnessed the relaxed way to live with ants until this family, and the ants, showed me what peaceful coexistence was.  I had been so naïve, thinking ants were an enemy, one of countless species of enemies across the natural world.

At the end of a hot Caribbean day, inside the bathroom, the ants would file down the wall from the edge of the ceiling to the little bare sink.  There they'd each take their turn at a drink from the moist end of the faucet before joining the parallel line of ants heading back up in the opposition direction to the ceiling, back from where they'd come, their thirst sated.

The ants were friendly and relaxed.  They understood they had nothing to fear from the family and now me.  There was no harm done.   Neither ant nor human worried at all.  It was live and let live, like Jesus would want. The Ant Jesus, I mean. Maybe the human one too.

Sunday, July 3, 2016


No Villain

Free will
is to chill
be still
and fill
with good will
not harm or kill
cant ever pay that bill
so chill
with all God's chillin
be good willin
chillin
and fillin.

                     


                                                                   Mother and daughter