KITCHEN MIGRATIONS

It's spring, and there is a migration going on in the kitchen. We had carpenter ants about five years ago, and the nest must still be somewhere close by. Because every spring about a hundred of these ants infiltrate our kitchen. However, I kill them, not only by hand and by foot, but also using a product called Amdro.

Carpenter ants have a communist power structure, which makes them easy to defeat. They are not allowed to think for themselves, or even to feed themselves, unless the matriarchal queen is in on it. So each foraging ant has to bring the food back to the queen, and the queen divvies it back to the ants (gives each ant a cut). To each according to their need, from each according to their ability. "Redistribution," could not be more aptly represented than by a colony of carpenter ants.

So Amdro's product resembles ant food, but it's poison. The workers take the pellets back to the queen, who ingests them, and croaks.

This is splendid. If you try to kill individual ants you'll be at it all summer because a carpenter ant queen can lay 100,000 eggs in a day. So you have to kill the queen, and the two back-up queens, and then you've destroyed the colony. Then, no more ants.

I think I know where the nest is. A yellow-throated flicker goes there to dig out ants all afternoon. (The majority of the yellow-throated flicker's food happens to be ants.)

It used to be the ant migrations would continue all summer. Now we only get a trickle, and then they stop. We've cracked the communist code, destroyed the nest at its inception. Thanks to Amdro!

It's fortunate that ants cannot read, or they would read this, and develop a defense. I don't think that there is any way for the ants to discover how I am laying waste to their colonies, which, except for the illiteracy, have something of the engineering genius of Rome.

You can't really say anything to animals. A bright green bug strolls by. It's not as if I can say hello. The woodchuck pops out of his hole. It's not as if I can say, Happy Easter!

A fly tries to get in the window, but is stopped by a screen. It's not as if I can say, go somewhere else. Take a mass migration to Mars, or your intrusion will result in the death penalty. Human beings can sometimes be animals, but you can generally deal with them rationally. Even a baby, who does not know yet any words, is already developing its rationality. In slurping noodles, it can manipulate more than one into its mouth. It can learn. I don't think ants can learn.

Therefore, I don't think insects can be Lutheran Surrealists.

Whole tribes of army ants in Brazil will never be blessed by us!

But as for all of you who can read this: Happy Easter! May God bless you!